I loved Anna-Marie McLemore’s Self-Made Boys; it was one of my best reads of 2022. Therefore, Venom and Vow was one of my most anticipated reads of 2023. And then … I didn’t like it. I tried, I really did. I wanted to push myself forward, but I just couldn’t get into the story. So, in the end, I decided to DNF at 29%. I’m so sorry, and of course, I will read Anna-Marie’s next book because I loved their Great Gatsby remix so much. This one just wasn’t for me.

I really liked the parts of this book that focused on Val & Cade's relationship, as well as the parts that took place at the monastery. But in general, I thought all the relationships needed to be better developed, and that there needed to be a lot more world building. This definitely read like a good author's first attempt at high fantasy.

This book is an enemies-to-lovers Fantasy with non-binary, trans, and disabled rep.As a person that have not lived these experiences, I was really excited to see how the author handled these topics. I think Anna and Elliott did a great job. This book really made me contemplate how my privilege as an able-bodied cis-woman and gave me perspective in the daily struggles of others.
I really loved the premise, and I would say it’s definitely geared for teens rather than young adults. The magical kingdoms and animals were really intriguing and wish more of that lore was included.
Thy only problem that I had with this book occurred in the bringing. Many of the characters were introduced in a rapid succession and I found myself confused as to who was who.
If you are looking for a great teen fantasy with unique magic and LGBTQ+ representation, then this book will fill your checks!

A fun fantasy with great queer representation that is just a little too confusing - there's a lot of deception, assuming different identities, and some difficulty following what is happening and when. The difficulty in trying to piece everything together detracted from what is otherwise an enjoyable read. A motivated reader might be able to power through and be rewarded with a sweet romance, but there will be some who don't make it that far.

Thanks to Macmillan and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really, really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately I just couldn't. The concept is fantastic; I loved the idea of two countries with Mexico and Ireland -inspired roots. The main two characters were so captivating, I read a lot of trans stories and this one was just right up my alley.

On paper this seemed like the perfect book for me, but the pacing of the book was just off. It was very fast, so fast to the point where it felt like the authors had taken whole chunks of the story out. I was confused half the time about who was who and what was what, I didn't really have much time to focus on the story itself. The fight scenes were also sorta confusing, it felt like I was reading instructions on how to dance without any pictures or videos (I don' t know if that makes sense so bear with me). Also the Ondina stuff made no sense.

Was it a horrible book? No, the concept was still great, and I loved the scenes in the monastery. Maybe these are all just issues that will be fleshed out before the book is published. But, still, it was a lot of issues.

DNF’d at 25%

I could not keep going with this book. The representation was a big draw for me to check out and read this book, but everything else was so flat or not explained at all.

I don't know how much these authors actually communicated with one another while planning this story. The history between the countries of Eliana and Adare felt so muddy. We're told they have been at war for a long time, or in conflict for many, many years, since our main character's grandparets or before. However, it is not eluded to or explained at all to the reader as to why this conflict is occurring. How did it start? Why is it still going on? What conflicts or irreconcilable differences do these countries have with one another? We never learn, at least not within the span I was reading it, which I feel like I should have learned something within the first quarter of the book, but I didn't.
The confusion of the conflict is apparently so trivial that the queen of Adare was able to implement multiple public works projects, some of them including Eliana. She implemented an aqueduct for the citizens of both Adare and Eliana with the help of Eliana. Why are these countries working together in the middle of a years/decades long conflict? How can they put aside their (unexplained) differences for such a big project that benefits both countries, and then still be at war after? Why was this not enough to end the war? Did this help with relations before the summit where everyone's parents were put to sleep?

Also, ALL of the older officials of both nations were at this summit on the boarder of the countries? No one was left behind in case this was a trap from either side? How does either country explain both sets of officials/rulers being put to sleep? Do they think the other country completely sabotaged themselves? Nobody gives their opinion/explanation of anything, so I was just left wondering and theorizing myself. I can understand how people could rationalize it to continue the fight, people are prideful and stubborn, it could happen. But nobody even questions it in the narrative up to this point.

It wasn't just the worldbuilding that left something to be desired. The characterization of our main characters also felt hollow.

Valencia/Gael is a bigender lady in waiting/assassin from Eliana. Their characterization around their gender identity felt well done for what it was. They and female, and have not told anyone about it. They hope for their father to wake up from the enchantment so they can let him know, and it seems they don't want anyone to know before they can tell him. Even their best friend, the princess of Eliana, does not know. However, all other aspects of their personality are left to their internal narration. Their sass, quips, and recklessness are all told to us either from their head, or from off-page actions we're told of later. They exist as a summary of a person, but we are supposed to be experiencing their story as it happens, not after the fact as they tell us in their head.
What I consider the most egregious example of this is in their relationship with the princess of Eliana, their best friend, Bryna. We don't get to hear anything of their history or friendship dynamic during this crucial establishing period of the story.
A great place we could have seen their dynamic in action but was squandered was after Bryna accepts an invitation to the Adare court. We read about Valencia/Gale's thoughts on this, how the time a suitor put on a play to win Bryna's affections, only for the basin holding the fake ocean broke and all the carpets in the hall needed to be replaced, is a better idea than walking into the court of their enemies. Then, all she says to Bryna is "So you're really going?" We don't get anything from that.
Additionally, we learn from Valencia/Gael that Adare is a nation of immigrants, and that some of those immigrants are from Eliana. That's pretty much it, V/G doesn't give any opinion nor insight on this. Does she care? Why would these people move to a country they've been at war with for so long? It's not that this situation is unbelievable, but it's hard to understand why V/G doesn't think of these people as traitors, or why we don't gain any insight on this occurrence, or if it happens in the reverse direction.

Our other POV is that of Cade, the transgender prince of Adare. Unlike V/G, we don't know who knows Cade is trans. We know he went away to an abbey and joined a religious (?) order of monks. This seems to be where his transition happened. He makes mention of them when he meets Gael of how he and the other monks swore to keep the secret of others like them. Why does being trans need to be kept secret in this world when there's supposedly an abbey full of trans people that's potentially supported by the royal/ruling family? I'm assuming his mother, the sleeping queen, knew if he was sent away. And probably his brother, Patrick, too, considering he's pretending to be him on the battlefield. Cade is supposed to be the next in line to the throne, but abdicated so Patrick could rule. Does his transition have something to do with this? What was his reason? And if he abdicated, why does he pretend to be Patrick sometimes? No one around him mentions it. Also, we don't know who knows his and Patrick's arrangement. Their physician knows because she tries to make sure they have the same scars/appearance, but who else knows? Their general, Lowell, who spends time with Cade pretending to be Patrick, and Cade and Patrick together? No clue. Cade's friends in the army? No idea. I'm not sure why they came up with this arrangement, why it needed to happen, how Cade benefits if he doesn't have the power to actually do anything and is still in the position of pretending to rule. It really seems like the worst situation he could be in for what he seems to want.

If all of that wasn't enough, the timelines are so confusing. It starts with Valencia traveling from the Eliana castle, across the boarder to a forest in Adare near a battlefield. Then she gets into a disguise as Gael to infiltrate Adare's army. Cade meets him while dressed as Patrick, rides back to the Adare castle to tell him not to fight this battle. The next day (maybe?) the battle is done, and Gael has been captured and found out to not be from Adare. This happened almost immediately after he got into disguise, so he's been captured for the entire battle. After Cade (as Patrick) takes him as his ward, they return to the palace of Eliana and broker the invitation to the Adare court. Then, he goes back to Adare and gets healed from the battle. Gael becomes Valencia again, and doesn't like that Bryna agreed to go to Adare. Then, next thing we know, Patrick and Cade are trying to figure out how to decorate for the visiting Elianan envoy, and then THEY JUST SHOW UP. While they're decorating. How much time is passing? How far away are these castles from each other? Why are they so close to the battlefields? Time and space feels like it doesn't exist in this world.

All of this together made it so I could not enjoy reading even the small amount of what I was able to get through.

When a curse falls upon two enemy kingdoms they will be forced to work together if they want to save their kingdoms. A transgender prince and a bigender dama/assassin must find a way to work together and not kill one another if they are to break the curse and possibly fall in love. Cade McKenna is a transgender prince who’s been doubling for his brother, Cade wants nothing to do with the throne and he just wants to stop killing people. Valencia Palafox is a young dama attending the future Queen of Eliana who is also Gael palma , an infamous boy assassin that Cade has vowed to protect. Cade doesn’t realize that Valencia and Gael are the same person and Val thinks that she’s fighting Patrick when in fact she’s fighting Cade. Cade and Val both think the other is to blame for starting the curse that befell their perspective kingdoms after running to each other on the night it occurred but something much more complex is going on and someone else is to blame. Now they’ll have to figure out who did it and what other dangerous enemies surround them. The story definitely had an interesting premise however it definitely fell short, the story was confusing, honestly the structure didn’t help either. The writing is okay but honestly the structure and way the story goes just made it so hard to follow along with a lot of the events and the flow of the story felt uneven. I honestly didn’t really see the romance between the two characters and just didn’t find myself caring all that much about the overall story. Unfortunately this was a miss for me, but i do always appreciate representation and that was a welcome treat in this book.

*Thanks Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, Feiwel & Friends for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Venom & Vow is one of the best YA fantasies I have read in long time...possibly ever. It hits all the marks: complex characters, a compelling world, and an engaging plot. I was unable to put it down as I was so enraptured by Val, Cade, and their journey. But the real gift of this book is in the representation it contains. Seeing a transgender prince and a bigender assassin, both of whom are disabled, was something I never knew I needed. Watching them fall in love made it even better. Venom & Vow is the rare YA fantasy that manages to create a fantastical story that is still grounded in the world that teenage (and adult!) readers exist. I had adored Anna-Marie McLemore's Self-Made Boys and had high expectations for Venom & Vow; it exceeded every one. I will be recommending this book to everyone I know and can't wait to the success I'm sure it will have after publication.

Thank you to Netgalley and Fiewel and Friends for sending me an early copy of this book! All opinions are my own!

Where to start with how I feel about this book!? I absolutely loved the premise and the intrigue that came with it. It's so fun to watch as Val and Cade try to navigate their ~relationships~ as the world around them shifts and brings so many twists and turns at them. I loved how they each had their own story arc and their own journey, but they complemented one another so well, and without one or the other, the story simply would not work. It was so fun to watch unfold!

I was pretty confused for a good while though, and that made it hard for me to get through. It was hard to understand who was who and what their motivations were at the beginning. It was really hard for me to get comfortable with the story, but once I did, it was super enjoyable.

I really loved all the different representation as well! The disability representation is amazing, and I loved the way that it was so seamlessly written into the story. The trans and nonbinary representation is also amazing and gave so much life to the romance and the story overall.

If you're a fantasy lover and looking for a really intriguing read, this is definitely the book for you!

I started this book reading slowly and carefully because it just wasn’t clicking with me. I was hoping if I carefully continued reading everything would click. That wasn’t really the case.

I really liked the representation in this book. I think the overall concept was interesting but this book was super confusing. The plot was all over the place. I got the gist of it but was fairly lost for most of the book. Some points were predictable and characters were jumping to way too many conclusions without actual evidence. I questioned the reasoning of so many events and characters. Like I was always missing something.

The world-building was totally lost on me as well. It’s like we were supposed to know what was going on with this world before we started, nothing was fully explained. I kept questioning myself thinking that I just missed the prior explanation but honestly there just wasn’t one.

I did like Valencia and Cade and what they represented. Some moments in the book were fun to read but this book was just too confusing for me to be onboard.

*Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

I wanted to enjoy this but overall found the story, characters, and plot to be something not what I was longing for or one that I would pick back up.

This was an amazing queer fantasy/witchy romance! The MCs are a transgender prince (a prince who is in a country/region that accepts trans people, but might not tolerate having a trans person on the throne), and a bigender dama/assassin (a person is on the path to fully embracing his/her true nature as a bigender person and letting his/her friends and family know about it).

💫 The world building is cool, although I struggled a bit to understand it at the beginning - the story starts off as though the reader already knows the world, so it took me a while to fully fall in sync with the world
💫 MC1 poses both as himself and as his brother Patrick from time to time, and MC2 poses as either a boy or a girl (or a fairy in some cases, but that's only a couple of times), and both MCs meet multiple times in all possible combination of identities. It was really fun to see it playing out and to see them finally understand that they were only ever meeting each other again and again.
💫 The ending was a perfect hea! It had a twist I never expected, and it ended wonderfully with lots of happiness!

-- ty to the authors, the publisher and Netgalley for an advanced copy!

Thank you, Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, for allowing me to read Venom & Vow early.

I'm in love with Anna-Marie McLemore's writing! Period! Venom & Vow is another fantastic story. Highly recommended.

Last year I read Lakelore and Self-Made Boys by Anna-Marie McLemore. Despite Lakelore's confusing setting, both cemented McLemore in my mind as a YA author with good prose and I was looking forward to reading more of their books. Sure I also read their short story in the At Midnight anthology which was very disappointing but I wrote this off as a one time thing.

YA fantasy can have a bad rep but I went into Venom&Vow right after finishing a fantastic YA fantasy that proved that good writing, interesting characters, well-built plot and decent worldbuilding exist in YA fantasy. Venom&Vow has none of those.

The writing immediately struck me as a downgrade from McLemore's previous works (could be a co-authoring issue). It's very choppy and repeats information too much. Later in the books I saw many attempts at a more flowery prose that doesn't match well with more modern tone.

The plot is extremely confusing (I am echoing other reviewers on this) and the very short chapters made it worse. We switched so often from one side to another I kept mixing up to which side the secondary characters belong to. From what I understood, two sides are at war but not too much that a poisoning incident doesn't create a major diplomatic issue. The conflict and resolution were very silly. It felt like the authors were using it as a backdrop for the romance they actually wanted to write (except that I didn't care.about that romance). My notes say "the stakes are so unserious omggg" pretty sure it was a reference to the two leaders randomly falling in love out of nowhere.

As for worldbuilding it's inexistant. From random words in other languages I can guess one side is Latin America inspired and the other Celtic (Gaelic/Irish) inspired. Or could be a mix. You know nothing about this world. Again it feels like a plot and a high fantasy world where not something the authors were interested in writing.

The monastery scene was touching but that was the most interesting trans thing in the book. It happened late in the book so it's shame that I had to hold one so long for something that felt touching and captivating. It's YA people won't care that long. Despite how much I loves this scene (or the initial parts of it) I was uncomfortable with having a monastery for afab people and one for amab especially since they're both mentioned to host nonbinary people. Since it's a small section they're mentioned as disctint and it's a shame to separate trans people when we have so much to learn from each other. Could have been cool to have visiting nuns and monks in each monastery. Like we could do without separating nonbinary people by birth assignments. Learning feminity from trans women is just as valuable as learning masculinity from trans men (also interesting to explore).

the writing of both main character disability was excellent. It was constantly reminded and they knew how to adapt to still be fighters.

As for the characters/romance.... I am still looking for Cade's personality. Val has a bit more going on but he was getting in my nerves by being rash. The miscommunication was dumb.

Venom & Vow by Anna-Marie McLemore; Elliott McLemore was an amazing story.

A beautifully written story with some fascinating characters.
This book was very fun and kept me interested from the start.
The world building and action scenes are amazing here.
This story is filled to the brim with epic-ness.
It's an amazing book to get lost in

Who wouldn't love a story about a transgender prince and a bigender dama/assassin?
It's epic! And interesting and so much fun!
Now I'm most definitely going to be checking AMM backlist. Because I need more stories like this!

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Children's & Feiwel & Friends Press for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

3/5 ⭐️ for me

i enjoyed this book but not as much as i thought i would.

i enjoyed the fleshed out characters, but wish the plot was a bit more ironed out. I was a bit confused at times and found it hard to follow the curse.

i think the representation we find in the two main characters is extremely valuable and i would have loved to read a book like this when i was a younger queer trying to find myself in media.

tl;dr
Mistaken identity combined with enemies-to-lovers make for a high drama story in a competently built fantasy world.

Thoughts
I started reading this book while waiting on a work call, and then I spent the entire actual call wondering when I could get back to the book (sorry, boss). The story hooked me from the first page, and kept up at a fast pace all the way through. I love a mistaken identity plot, and the delicious twists of our two leads each mistaking each other adds so much drama to the proceedings. The world building's strength is its politics and culture, with Spanish and Irish terms sprinkled in to differentiate the two kingdoms. The monastery where Cade lived was easily my favorite part, as a thoughtful and thorough way to write queerness in an alternate world. In comparison, the magic system is somewhat underdeveloped, which lead to a couple points of confusion. The middle of the book where the POVs switch off regularly also has a few jumps in the timeline that I couldn't always follow. The relationship between our leads takes the majority of the focus, with an enemies-to-lovers narrative, and lots of political maneuvering for them and the supporting cast. The end hints that there may be more to come, but it ties up all the plot threads very neatly, so this can be read as a standalone without any problems.

This book was incredible! I loved the immersive world building and in-depth character descriptions that really built up before the story pushed off. The plot was well developed with an ending leaving me wanting more of these two authors.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this eARC!

This wasn't good...I loved the representation in this book but it fell flat. The characters weren't super interesting, the plot was lackluster and boring, and like the other reviews, it was just confusing. I did DNF at 35% so maybe it gets better past that, but I couldn't keep going.

I loved everything in this book regarding gender identity, and it was such a unique and interesting spin on a fantasy book that I enjoyed a lot! Both Val and Cade were super compelling and their journeys were really emotional and important to read about.

The main issue I had was I couldn’t really get into the plot outside of the characters’ personal identities and growth. The whole curse on the forest and everything to do with that struck me as a little confusing and boring, which was disappointing. However, I think this is a book that has a lot of good going for it, and I will be definitely trying out more books from the McLemores!