"I came to conquer this land and its people, but instead, one of its people conquered me."

Justice for Pestilence. He deserves better than Sara tbh.

But in all honesty, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I was expecting a somewhat "darker" romance with mostly spice and not a lot of substance. Kind of like when you get chicken wings that burn your mouth but don't actually curb your appetite. But the discussions surrounding mortality/immortality and the idea of being human and how humanity at its core is good really gave the book that substance I was looking for, and both characterized and humanized Pestilence for me.

First published in March of 2018, Pestilence is being republished in August 2023 with a brand-new cover! Thank you to Sourcebooks, Bloom Books, NetGalley and the author for the digital advanced copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I will start by stating the obvious. This is a slow-burn romance. The woman is getting it on with a literal Horseman of the Apocalypse, so yeah.. it's not going to be an easy, love-at-first-sight, romance.

That being said, it's the only reason I'm giving it 3 stars. I don't like slow burn, especially this slow.

I read the book for a book club I'm in, and while I was getting used to instant love and spicy scenes from the first chapters, this book gave me a slowly built romance with spicy scenes near the end. Very well-written spicy scenes, I have to add.

The characters are also well- written and the descriptions are amazing. And since this is a big book, there is the right amount of info and enough character development.

The pace was slow, but since Pestilence is the incarnation of plague and disease, I wasn't expecting anything else.

It is a great read and I cannot wait to read the next book!

Thank you, NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Bloom Books!
A dark romance about the four horsemen? How can I resist? I love the concept of the books; The four horsemen come to Earth and cause havoc. The horsemen are smoking hot, and I enjoyed reading about Sara's relationship with Pestilence as she tries to save the world by showing Pestilence that the world deserves saving. For a romance, there is a lot of commentary about humanity and how there are good and bad parts.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Bloom Books for the opportunity to read Pestilence by Laura Thalassa in exchange for my honest review.

The Four Hoursemen arrive on Earth and bad things start happening. Life as we know it is forever changed. Electricity stops working through out most of the world. A new way of life begins. And then Pestilence returns and people start getting sick. People start dying.

Pestilence was sent to begin the end of humanity. He’s spreading a death sentence across the world. Sara “wins” the right to stay behind has her firehouse is evacuated. Her job, Kill Pestilence. The only problem is, no one told her he can’t be killed. They also failed to mention that he’s gorgeous.

Pestilence is the journey Sara and Pestilence go on while he does what he was sent to do and Sara fights for him to see why he should stop killing everyone off. Along the way Sara’s heart gets wrapped up but what really matters, Pestilence discovers the good parts of being human.

There is a lot of darkness in this one. A lot of violence and death, but it also has a big heart and for some it will outshine the rest. That said, if you’re not a fan of reading about a lot of death and blood, this might not be the one for you. Sara is a strong character with a deep love for her family and friends who fights Pestilence for as long as she can. Pestilence is there to do a job and nothing will stop him. He is disease and is on earth to take out all of humanity but a messed up brutal attempted killing and a chance encounter with an elderly couple just might change his mind.

If you can get past the blood and take in the connection Sara and Pestilence have, I think you’ll enjoy this one. It took me about ⅔ of the way to really get into the story and even then there were times where it felt repetitive, but I understood the authors reason for that. Felt like Thalassa is setting this up for a series, interested to see what happens next.

Great read! I couldn’t put it down! Jumping right into the next one! One of my favorite reads so far this year!

Although I did enjoy this, I do not this book (series) is for everyone. I did find Sara to be a bit annoying at times, but did enjoy seeing the growth from Pestilence and their relationship. I do look forward to the next in the series, which I started immediately after finishing Pestilence. I am curious to see where this series goes, especially how it ends.
I did enjoy the writing style. It wasn't something I had to think to hard about, and it was right to the point. It was a perfect beach read.

This books was so creative and amazing!! It was such serious page turner for me. I can’t wait to binge the entire series, as soon as I could.

I don’t know what I was expecting from this book, but wow, was I pleasantly surprised!

The four harbingers of the apocalypse have returned to earth, and Pestilence is traveling through a small Canadian town exacting revenge on humankind when one woman decides to take it upon herself to rid the world of him. I think we’ve all been in those relationships before where you’re convinced you can change the person you’re with whether it’s getting them to drink/party less or communicate better. Well, this is kind of like that except Sara was taken prisoner by Pestilence after she attempts to kill him, and she’s trying to change him by getting him to no longer want to kill everyone in the world by plague. So yeah…same same but different. But honestly, I was shocked at how well I connected with the characters and how much I enjoyed even the grittiest parts of this book. You get to see glimpses of the best and worst parts of humanity, and begin to understand even the most morally grey of MMCs. And the writing? It was just genuinely fun to read. I cannot remember a single lull in this book or a part where I was okay with putting it down.

I absolutely loved this book and couldn’t recommend it enough. Thank you to Laura Thalassa, Bloom Books and NetGalley for allowing me the chance to read the eARC!

I loved the hero's growth much more than the heroine's in this one, but the romance was there! We get an instalove vibe that really propels the story quickly along with an engaging, unique plot line. The entire series is captivating and this one is another for my shelf!

I am forever on a mission to find fantasy romance books that actually work for me. I had hope that this one may, but unfortunately it did not quite. It certainly was not bad, but it did not quite float my boat.

It started off quite interesting, but I immediately wondered how this was ever going to turn into a love story…. But it did. Yes, it did. Don’t ask me how, but it did. The main character Sara is actually quite decent and I found myself liking her, even if I did not understand her at all. How can you fall for someone who actually pretty much dragged you to death behind his horse? Is that something that you can just forget just because he has a pretty face? And I am not even talking about the fact he killed thousands upon thousands of people, including children, which she experienced first hand! Well, I won’t go into that, because he’s Pestilence and what did I expect.


The chemistry between Sara and Pestilence was there, but not as strongly as I would have liked. I never felt like I was really rooting for them to be together. I just found myself slightly baffled by their relationship. Still ,I kind of enjoyed it for what it was. It was a slower burn than I had expected going into this and I did appreciate that. The problem was that to me it felt like the whole narrative was a build-up to them having (surprisingly unexciting) sex and then it kind of imploded like a badly cooked cake and I spent the final third hoping that the cook would salvage it, but unfortunately both characters became a little annoying. The story kind of lost any oomph that it had had.

And yet… YET… I kind of enjoyed it for the most part. It was compulsively readable, even if I never felt super invested. It’s a paradox, but there you go. I can see why people would enjoy this. I will also say that the sexy times were not too cringy, which is no mean feat. It was just not sexy. I prefer not-sexy to cringy, so there’s that.

Would I recommend this? Maybe, to someone who I know likes fantasy romance and is not as stupidly picky as I am with the genre. Like I said, it is a compulsive read and will probably work for a lot of people.

Will I read the next book? Maybe. If it comes on my path. Surprisingly I am mildly interested.

<b> <I> Thank you so much to Net Galley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of “Pestilence (The Four Horseman #1)” by Laura Thalassa in exchange for an honest review. All of the following opinions are formulated on my own. Any quotes in this review should be cross-referenced with the final copy for any possible edits.</I> </b>


<b> Overall rating: </b> 4 out of 5 stars

<b> My review: </b> Pestilence is the first book in the Four Horseman series recently republished by Bloom Books with a new cover. Pestilence is a book set in apocolpyse surronding the Four Horseman who have come to earth with the goal destroying all of human society. The rest of them have disappeared except for Pestilence. Our story starts as Pestilence arrives in Sara Burn's town and everyone marked for death. She shoots Pestilence and is taken as his prisoner.

I really enjoyed reading this book and it was definitely an interesting concept and a diffcult task to take on writing. How do you make someone love Pestilence? Well, you ask Laura Thalassa for starters because she did it successfully!

<b> Favorite quote(s): </b> “Love has a funny way of rearranging priorities.”

This is the first dark romance book in the Four Horsemen series. The first book centers around Pestilence the Conqueror who has come to spread plaque throughout the world as punishment. Throughout his journey to wound the Earth Pestilence meets Sara Burns when she tries to put an end to Pestilence and the steed he rides. However, there is no death for Pestilence and Sara will soon become his prisoner who he plans to make suffer for her plan to end him.

I enjoyed Laura Thalassa’s writing and the plot was interesting. However, I felt the story was incredibly repetitive. How many towns/cities can you ride through with minimal action. I kept waiting for something different to happen, but it never really did. I had some questions about the horsemen that went unanswered in this book, hopefully we get more answers in the following books in the series.

CONTENT WARNING: plague, blood, gore, torture, death, death of children, violence, gun violence, grief

I’ve had my eye on this author, and have been meaning to pick up one of her books for an embarrassingly long time, but haven’t gotten around to it. This indie series was picked up by a traditional publisher to be rereleased, and I was thrilled to get approved for it.

This book was tough for me to rate because I have some mixed feelings about it. There were some things that I enjoyed and that were done really well, and some things that I didn’t like as much. Let’s get into the things I liked.

Thalassa’s writing is smooth and reads effortlessly. The pages would fly, and I went through this book surprisingly fast. I loved the way Sara spoke fluent sarcasm, because her inner monologue sounded a lot like mine at times. Once I got past the initial meet-not-so-cute, the enemies-to-lovers trope was done beautifully. I can’t forget to mention the spice, which was slow-burn and fantastic. Finally, there’s a light-hearted and fun dynamic at times, which almost had me forgetting that I was reading about the end of the world.

However, there were also some things that didn’t work for me. I always try to put myself in the character’s shoes when I’m reading, and I guess there’s a huge difference between Sara and I, because we have some seriously different responses to things. Like torture for example: if someone tortures me, I don’t care how pretty they are, I’m going to hold a grudge until the end of time; whereas Sara seems super quick to forgive Pestilence because he’s pretty. Also, their smexy times seem to happen at times when there’s some seriously unsmexy stuff going on … right after throwing up, when people are dying of the plague right nearby, etc.

The relationship is given time to build, and readers get to see the dynamic change slowly as Pestilence and Sara are forced together. But as they do this, their daily routine was repetitive. They go to a town, enter a house, spend the night, leave and repeat the process. Throughout the entire book. And for so much of the book, Sara’s internal dilemma was repetitive as well. She spends half the book trying to convince herself that she hates him and does want him because he’s pretty, then almost the rest of the second half trying to convince herself that she isn’t in love with him when it’s blatantly obvious that she is. It got a bit frustrating at times.

Overall, this wasn’t a bad read, even with the issues I had with it. I especially loved how it ended, and can’t wait to start reading the next book in the series.

Such an amazing series! Pestilence hooks you immediately with the themes of dystopia, survivorship, revenge, and lust. The characters have banter, and angst, have a drive towards each other despite being mortal (or immortal?) enemies. Ah you just want to keep reading and diving into their lives together and the story! And each book that follows in this series is equally as amazing.

I had heard wonderful things about this series and recalled the basic premise but had not got around to reading it. When I saw this available as an arc I thought I would be stupid not to pick it up and it did not disappoint!

Genuinely one of the most creative romances I have read in years. Very well paced, gripping and deeply moving my the end of it.

As soon as I finished this book I ran for the next one. There’s absolutely nothing else like it out there so you must give it a read!

Behold a white horse and he who sat on it had a bow and a crown given to him and he went conquering and to conquer and Pestilence was his name.

They forgot to say Pestilence was golden haired & angelic looking – enough to make any girl get a little distracted when she’s trying to kill him!!!

This is the first book in the Four Horsemen series and so not what I expected when I started my read. It’s an enemies to lovers romance set in a dystopian world already ravaged by the failure of technology after the initial arrival of the horsemen. just as people were getting back on their feet, Pestilence rode once again spreading a deadly plague across the country killing all it came into contact with. Sara, a fire fighter drew the short straw and stayed behind when her town evacuated in a desperate attempt to stop him in his tracks. Sorry Sara, but you should’ve realised you can’t kill a supernatural being doing God’s work as easily as that and when he wakes up he might be mad with you. He keeps her alive as part of his vengeance so she can watch everyone else die by his hand but along the way the hatred and sparring soon turns to attraction and passion but will this newly awakened feelings in Pestilence be enough for him to see there is hope for the human race or not even love can stop a man on a mission?

I loved the character development here. Pestilence wasn’t really evil or self-serving. He was simply doing what he was created to do and it was intriguing to see his journey as he opened himself to human emotions and the conflict he had between his duty and his growing feelings for Sara but a part of me wonders while Pestilence was falling in love, was it more a case of Stockholm syndrome in Sara’s case. I’m looking forward to reading the remaining books in this series.

An easy 5 star book! Gosh, this book was such a good read! I enjoyed every banter, every moment between Sara and Pestilence, every word written by Laura. I had already pre-ordered the series in paperback before i got approved to read the book for a review with Netgalley so I was already really interested in the book and it did not disappoint! I cannot wait for the other 3 books to arrive so I can finish up the rest of the series!

I'm in a between with this book ! I liked it but would give like 3.5 stars ! It was a little bit long to start for real ! Turning around for a long time ! But it was spicy and loved the character and their badass-ness

Pestilence est un livre que j’avais déjà lu en anglais il y a quelques années mais quand je l’ai trouvé sur Netgalley dans la version Bloom, j’ai décidé de me lancer dans une relecture de cette saga incroyable!

Les quatres cavaliers sont arrivés sur Terre, Pestilence est le premier à devoir accomplir sa mission. Sara Burn est une humaine qui va tout faire pour l’empêcher d’y arriver quitte à y laisser son cœur.

C’est donc une relecture et j’ai adoré me replonger dans cet univers apocalyptique qui est bien construit et qui est addictif. J’ai adoré la complexité du personnage de Pestilence mais aussi son évolution au fil des pages au contact de Sara. Celle- ci est une tête brûlée, pensant devoir sauver tout le monde mais elle apprend à prendre du recul et elle mûrit. Leurs interactions sont juste parfaites! Certes, il y a des facilités dans le récit mais on passe quand même un excellent moment avec ce livre! Qu’est ce qu’il me tarde de relire le tome sur War!

Ps: ce livre est déjà disponible en français aux Éditions Bookmark, ne passez surtout pas à côté! Et si vous êtes téméraires, la réédition anglaise sort le 15 août!

As the first book in Laura Thalassa’s Four Horsemen series, this book gives us more than an introduction to Pestilence as a character. It introduces us to the apocalyptic world that she is building and gives us hints on what’s to come in the future with War, Famine, and ultimately, Death.

From the very beginning, Thalassa’s descriptive writing brings the reader into the book, making you feel every bit of Sara and Pestilence’s pain, discomfort, worry and affection as it starts to grow.

While I love all of the books in this series, Pestilence as the first horseman will always hold a special place in my heart and will forever be my favorite!

This ARC is a reread and I am leaving this review voluntarily.