An angsty, YA sapphic retelling of Rapunzel. Ava and Kaye rock a dual perspective in this witchy, vampire fantasy novel.
I didn’t feel like the book’s execution matched the original description I read for it. This books is very YA and most of the plot is driven by each character’s internal monologue. At times the story felt bumpy due to this dual perspective tale. Both characters voices were very similar. There was also some very obvious foreshadowing in the beginning of the book that took me out of the story.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book, my thoughts are my own

I wanted to love this so much, as a huge retellings fan and a queer woman myself. The premise of reading Rapunzel but Gay with vampires and witches sounded like the perfect mix.

Unfortunately it was a miss for me, there are good ideas in this novel, no doubt, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The characters have little to no personality, they don't feel real, there is a lack of showing who they are vs telling us (for a lot of aspects in the book including the worldbuilding). While it is marketed as YA it feels a lot younger, more so middle grade that is just on the cusp of becoming a YA. I found myself bored and un-interested in the romance which was the thing I was most excited about.

This was suck a missed opportunity to have complex characters with a grey moral compass, both have difficult past and there is this emphasis on humans being good and vampires being bad with no explanation as to why in this world it has that connotation. Both POV's have such similar voice (because they lack individuality) that it is hard to distinguish when reading who's point of view we are actually reading from.
There is a lot of issues with he actual flow of the book. More often then not we are told about something that happened, reasons why a friendship is close, etc. rather than immersed in scenes that would prove that point or make us understand those same things. Kind of like we are such bff, with no actual evidence shown to show us they are close or "this is such an important piece of my past" but let me tell you about it rather than the author showing us why it is important.

The romance is hard to believe in, the motivations of our characters badly shown or developed which makes the plot make little to no sense. It is super predictable, there are many times when the choices made are not logical based on what little information we did get e.g. character A super thirsty is dying, character B finds berry = solution but NO they have to keep them and not eat them. The text is very repetitive, there are a LOT of things that could've been cut out and better edited, this book would've benefited from editing and more time to work on it to make the book flow more and have tangible reasons for characters to make decisions.

In the end I was super disappointed in my read. I wanted to love it, but so much of the potential this had was wasted by the choices the author made when putting those ideas together.
I wanted to love this, but I couldn't.
1.5-1.75/5 stars
Bookarina.

3.5 stars -- the cover art on this book instantly drew me in, as did the descriptor of a queer retelling of Rapunzel --- with witches and vampires. Such an interesting storyline with a fast-paced, action-heavy plot. I loved that it was told through the dual POVs of Ava and Kaye, two best friends who were separated by circumstances and had to find their way back to one another through trust and understanding. Can their friendship rise above being on opposite sides of a brutal conflict?

Not a whole lot of romance happening here, but a great fantasy read nonetheless.

First I do want to say thank you to the NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for providing me with an ecopy of this book, that being said I don’t think this book is for me. I ended up dnfing at around 37%.

I really wanted to like this book. Because sapphic fairytale retellings are some of my favorite reads but this just fell flat for me. I was really struggling to connect to the characters but their personalities just feel underdeveloped, there’s nothing I can really pinpoint as a definitive vibe for really anybody. I found myself starting to do more skimming than actual reading because it just couldn’t hold my attention.

I feel like this book really had potential but I needed more. More character building, more world building, more chemistry between characters, just something.

The Witch and the Vampire was absolutely fantastical! Flores wrote a story that was so well written I found myself flying through the pages, unable to put the book down, pondering what would happen next. My favorite piece of this entire story was how believable the characters were.

The writing is clear and clean, and very immersive. The book hums along at a good clip, but the pacing makes sure we're given time to breathe between plot-intensifying moments. The story was absolutely engaging and the work that went into the settings was noticeable and superb. I felt absolutely transported and I'm so incredibly glad I was able to read an arc of this story.

If I am being honest this book just wasn't it for me, the no matter how hard I tried to go back and make sure things made sense to me, a lot of the time it was really hard for me to follow, and I felt like a lot of things didn't necessarily add up.

Don't get me wrong, the characters were adorable but I just didn't feel like there was enough room for growth and the potential was missed. Overall I loved the plot the execution was my only issue!

Unfortunately I had to DNF this, the story plot was great but I think something was missing like the plot had a lot of traveling and not much character development

I really liked the premise and the romance, but I couldn’t quite get into the world and plot. There were really interesting parts, but it just wasn’t for me.

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin's Press, and Wednesday Books for allowing me to read this book!!

The Witch and the Vampire is a sapphic Rapnuzel retelling, but mangages to set itself apart from the other renditions of Rapnuzel. We as readers see this in terms of the complex political and magical systems. I truly believe this is where the story thrives. Unfortunately, I feel the pacing between action and exposition was a little off. As the action seems rushed and the exposition was slow. I would have preferred a balance between the too. I felt the ending was extremely rushed and was unsatisfying. The realtionship development between Ava and Kaye didn't seem realistic to me. I think this largely is due to the pacing issues throughout the book. I do think Ava and Kaye are wonderful characters. However, one of Kaye's choices felt out of character. I did not think we saw Kaye go through enough development to make that choice. I personally feel the politcal and magical systems make it worth reading The Witch and the Vampire!!



A full review will be published on 02/11/2023 @12:oopm EST on Instagram @abookwormsgarden

This was the first book in awhile that I didn't finish in a day in one sitting. I read like 100 pages, took a break for two weeks and then finished it in another two days. I don't know why this was so hard to get through. It was a lot of traveling, different characters getting imprisoned repeatedly, the plot just dragged in ways I really disliked. I liked the romance between the two main characters though, I always need more sapphic rep in YA fantasy. Just a disappointing plot with a weird ending

The witch and the vampire was a great mystery that involved the three main characters. Each solving their own aspects of a intertwined puzzle. I enjoy the character development and the journey they took to get to the end. There is a touch of some friends- enemies- lovers and I enjoyed the YA romance. This ended in an open plot and I would definitely be up for more. This is my first book by Francesca Flores and I enjoyed the writing style.

This was a quick read for me but overall it fell a bit short. I struggled to connect and relate to the characters. I absolutely love the cover of this book and I do think others will love it... it just was not for me.

Thanks to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for the eARC!

The good. It's a sapphic Rapunzel retalling! It's enemies to lovers (sort of). The characters are great and it's a wonderfully told love story!

Bad...ish? The world building is a smidge confusing to me and I kept on having to reread parts because I was confused.

4.5/5
This was an action packed, forever twisting and turning, JOURNEY. I love fantasy books that follow a quest. For The Witch and the Vampire, the two female main characters (Ava and Kaye) are on warring sides of society. Ava is a vampire who has been locked in a tower and hidden away. Kaye is a flame witch who's soul goal is to catch and kill the vampire she believes killed her mother. This vampire just happens to be Ava, her childhood best friend who disappeared 2 days before her mother was drained. As she escapes her prison of a home Ava teams up with Kaye to get through the forest to the vampire queen Cassiopea behind the Bone Wall that separates the vampires from the human city. Ava quickly realizes there is something desperately wrong with the forest. It smells of rot and it comes to life whispering for help in her ear. The story follows the two young women as they discover that everything they know about the world is completely wrong. This book strikes the perfect balance between fantasy world building and romance/teenage angst. I would highly recommend this one to younger readers, I would say it is appropriate for as young as 13. I also think it's worth giving it a try if you're between 20-30 and went through the Twilight craze of the mid 2000's/2010's. Its like Kingdom of the Cursed and Twilight had a baby in the best way possible. I can't wait to follow Ava and Kaye throughout the series as they kick ass and take names!

When I saw the cover of this book and the words queer, Rapunzel, and retelling, I was sold! Overall, I enjoyed the story. It was a new take on vampires, a cool form of a magic system, and an interesting origin story for both of them. I was having a hard time pulling myself away from the last half of the book, as I kept needing to know what happened next! There were definitely some twists in there that I didn’t see coming! I really appreciated the heroes journey for both of the girls, as they learned self-acceptance: Ava learned to embrace both sides of herself, while Kaye learned to quit trying to live up to others’ expectations or ideas of who they thought she was or should be.

Ava and Kaye’s relationship was really sweet, but I was hoping for more physically intimate scenes (obviously YA appropriate). There were some intimate scenes that were more in the yearning context that I think could have been balanced out towards the end to really have that slow burn pay off.

What I most struggled with while reading was the repetitiveness that plagued most of the book. It was definitely more heavy at the beginning, but there were parts throughout where the author repeated the same information, or even the same phrases, right by each other. At the beginning, there was a lot of repetitiveness when trying to build the world and explain the magic system. The same information was coming from both characters in back-to-back chapters from each of their point of view, which wasn’t needed, since one character already established something. Having dual POVs creates an advantage in world building in that one character can fill in gaps where another character would be lacking in information and also to spread out the exposition so it’s not so heavy, but it doesn’t seem like the advantage was used to its full potential here.
There were also some paragraphs that were added in a few areas that I thought were weird spots to have them. Either it broke up the action or narrative in an unnecessary way, it just didn’t fit in that particular part of the story, or wasn’t needed at all.
Along with the repetitiveness at the beginning, the writing was also very stiff. The sentences felt very short and to the point, bordering on a middle-grade level. It most likely was because it included so much exposition, but I’ve read fantasy and magical YA novels where the exposition was more lyrical. Luckily, this stiff writing did not continue throughout the book. I’m glad I pushed through the first 10-20% because the writing was more smooth afterwards.
I’m hoping some of these issues are caught and fixed before final publication.
One last issue I had was that the climax fell a little flat for me. I do like the overall outcome, but it kind of felt rushed, and there wasn’t as much umph as I thought there would be. It felt a tiny bit like the Battle of Winterfell, where I was like… “that’s it?”

With all of that said, I did enjoy and like this book. I do hope there’s a second one following Ava and Kaye’s new lives.

Side note: I actually started picturing Catherine Zeta-Jones as Eugenia, which made me start routing for her when I shouldn’t have.

My overall rating is 3.8, so rounding up to 4 stars. I will be posting this review on both my Goodreads and Instagram.
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33070665-courtnie-pollard
Instagram link: https://instagram.com/theannexlibrary?igshid=YWJhMjlhZTc=

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC however, I am DNF'ing at 18%. There's a few reasons for this, but the bulk of it is the clumsy and clunky world building. I love the idea of a sapphic Rapunzel retelling with vampires and witches. The author's world building however is already repetitive, often confusing, and mostly leaves me scratching my head wondering what anything means and I'm not even a quarter of the way through the novel. There's some great stuff here that I have enjoyed, but I'm now so focused on trying to figure out why I'm not understanding this world, or how things work that have already been explained to me, than I am on actually enjoying the novel.

This book has so many great ideas and good worldbuilding but I just felt the pacing was off for the majority of it. Don't get me wrong, the romance between Kaye and Ava was phenomenal and really well executed. The side characters were not fleshed out enough for me to get attached to them. Besides that, I really really wished we got more on Caseopiea(sorry if I spelled it wrong) backstory. I was so curious about her during the whole book and she just didn't do much. If you want a sapphic rapunzel romance story with vampires this is for you!

Thanks Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for this e-arc!

Ava and Kaye were best friends until vampires broke into the magical barrier protecting their town. An attack where Kaye’s mother was killed and Ava was turned into a vampire. Since then, Ava’s mom has kept her trapped in her house since she still exhibits witch powers. Desperate to escape her mother’s control and her plan to destroy the town, Ava breaks out of her house.

On the other side, Kaye has been training as a Flame witch, to kill vampires. When the two collide on the night of Ava’s escape, Kaye follows Ava, planning on eventually turning her in. But the forest has other plans, and everything they thought they knew drastically changes.

Thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for an advanced copy of The Witch and the Vampire by Francesca Flores to review! Fairy tale retellings are usually a good time, so I was excited to jump into this book. Especially because the twist in this (a Rapunzel retelling with witches and vampires) sounded intriguing! For the most part, I wasn’t disappointed.

My favorite thing about this was the way that Flores played with the Rapunzel story. She added some interesting twists and turns, and the characters are pretty great. For me, they were what made the story, especially the chemistry between Ava and Kaye. We’re here for a friends turned enemies turned lovers romance, honestly.

However, I did wish some of the world building would have been made more clear throughout the book. We get bits and pieces at the beginning, but never really the whole story, making some of the plot unclear. The plot itself also moves a bit too slowly at the beginning, meaning that a lot of the action is packed into the end, adding to some of the clarity issues.

Despite that, this is a quick read, and if you enjoy fairy tale retellings, you might get something out of this one! Especially if you’re just looking for something quick and easy to enjoy.

Thank you for sending me an ARC of this book.

I DNF'd about 50% through the book. It was just not the book for me, or I needed to be in the mood to read this type of book. The first part is slow-paced. I couldn't connect with the characters. However, The concept of the book is excellent. The cover art is fantastic. If you like a retelling of fairy tales, you should give this book a shot.

The witch book:

I love a good friends to enemies to lovers. But i will say that it is very clear where everyone stands at every point. There isn’t really good tension on a lot of things because the book tells you exactly what everyone is thinking at all times.

When the vampires are kept in the forest with a magic bone wall, it’s the responsibility of the Flame Witches to make sure the wall holds and to hunt vampires. Kaye, a Flame witch in training, is on a mission to redeem her family name and be the best flame witch she can. Ava, her childhood best friend, and a Root witch, is a vampire who is held in a tower to help her mother stay in power. When Ava escapes and Kaye is sent to capture vampires in the forest, who will win out and who will survive? I love Kaye and Ava though, they’re both young and trying to overcome things they have been told their whole lives. Getting past that and becoming their own people and fighting for their own ideals is so much of their journey and I love that their progress isn’t linear. I just loved the character development and both of these girls. I wish there was a little more tension in their relationship or that you had some suspense in not knowing exactly what each character thought of the others at all times. I also wish they had developed the Tristan storyline more. I feel like that could have added an interesting dimension and story line and it just didn’t happen.

I did love that this book had really good villains. They had motivations that were varied and interesting, but they were realistic people. It also had really great world building. I loved the types of magic and how the lore and history of the people comes out gradually and impacts the storyline. I wish it had gone a little more into detail, but it is a short book that’s a quick read. This world is really cool and I’m excited to read the sequel.