Thank you Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I personally have never been a big fantasy person this book though was wild. It feels so unreal. I just cannot describe how I feel. It is amazing.

I love the take on vampires, or as they're known here, reapers. The last 3rd of the book had me on the edge of my seat & absolutely stressed out. I'm glad I found this on booktok ♥!

This Ravenous Fate

I received this book from NetGalley for an honest review. 

Set im the 1920’s in Harlem. Reapers have become a problem and the Saint family is trying to find a solution. Elise and Layla were best friends until Elise betrayed Leyla. Leyla lost her family and turned into a reaper.

I wanted to live it but parts of the story just didn’t flow for me. The characters lacked something, maybe some chemistry.

“For Black girls everywhere- you are enough. “

“Politicians claim to hate us because we break their laws, but they hire us to break their laws. “

“The more money, the less morals. “

“Look at history.. It’s not made by great men and great minds, but rather selfish motivations.”

This was a highly anticipated release between the premise and the setting, but after finishing it I’m sitting here unsure how I feel about it.

Layla Quinn and Elise Saint were best friends until several years ago with Layla’s parents were killed and she was turned into a reaper. She especially blames the Saints and most especially Elise, because Elise betrayed her trust by telling her father, Tobias Saint, about Layla’s parents’ plan to help the reapers and meet with the Harlem clan. Because of the danger to her from the reapers, Elise was sent to France to study piano, and the story opens with her return to the city for a Saint event. When a friend of Elise’s is murdered by a young man who appears human in death but Layla remembers him as a fresh reaper, the girls are forced to team up to figure out what really happened and what’s going on with the reapers of Harlem, while also trying to clear Layla’s name.

This story definitely has a lot of potential and I think I would continue the series to see what happens next, especially with the grim reveal in the last few chapters, but also I’m feeling very eh about the whole thing. The setting was great - it’s hard to go wrong with 1920s Harlem - and I did love the reaper element of world building. The idea that vampires are a result of human experimentation of enslaved Black people (especially Black women) is a perfect starting point in so many ways, and I loved Valeria’s character a lot between her rage and trauma and history.

I think overall I loved a lot of elements of this book and the world, but I don’t know that I can root for Elise and Layla as a couple and I don’t know that all of the choices worked for me. I think I would still recommend the book, and I am curious about continuation of Layla and Elise’s story, but I also overall feel eh and conflicted on how I feel about the book. Maybe I wasn’t the right reader for this book, after all.

[Cannonball Read review will post August 2, 2024]

This book was written so perfectly. I felt like I was there. I just loved it so much!! Definitely 10/10. Recommend to read

I was sucked into this book. I spent most of today reading it because I couldn't put it down for too long before going back to it. But when I did finish, I had to sit and reflect for a bit because I felt mixed about some things.

Firstly, the positive: Elise and Layla are both intriguing protagonists with distinct voices/POVs. Dennings did a wonderful job portraying both girls' strengths and flaws. I kept floundering between which of the girls' hatred was more justified against the other, because both of their POVs garnered a lot of emotional weight and made me feel for both of them. Plus, the building of their romance was nearly perfect - and this is coming from someone who typically can't stand an enemies-to-lovers romance.

The writing is also really great. Lots of vivid scenery description and dialogue exchanges between characters, but I think my favorite aspects were whenever music was involved. Elise plays the piano, and she uses music as an outlet of whatever emotion she needs to let out. I absolutely adore musical metaphors when they're done right like this.

There are a couple things that hold me back from loving this, such as the rushed ending. I don't wanna get into it too deeply here, but the romantic tension is rushed through at the end and left me in a confused state on where Elise and Layla's relationship stands. The worldbuilding also felt incomplete at some parts, with Dennings focus being on Elise or Layla's emotional turmoil repeatedly rather than painting a clearer picture of the world they inhabited. There was also a twist with Elise's sister and Layla's mom-figure that came out of nowhere at the last minute? I kinda figured there was something weird going on there, but that reveal still was weird for me.

Overall, this is a good book, and I very much hope any issue I have here will be expanded upon and/or resolved in the next book.

I thought I’d be placing this lovingly next to my copy of Carmilla. Vampires and lesbians just go together, ya know? Unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen.

I loved the atmosphere. It felt beautiful and vibrant but also dark and gritty. Jazz age and crime noir. It did lean a little more towards the latter IMO but it worked. The whole plot is basically a murder mystery.

However, the mystery itself was not mysterious enough for me. It really plodded in the middle and I’m not entirely sure how since the villain was obvious (you get zero points for guessing who). I’m absolutely fine with guessing plot points correctly if the journey to resolution is still engaging, and it was sometimes, but not consistently.

I was a little confused about how there was an agreement for reapers not to kill humans because it would disrupt the balance in the city, but Layla seemed to kill humans all the time?

Speaking of Layla, she was my favorite character. I lived for her anger. Not only is she a Black woman, and an orphan, she’s a reaper, which is yet another layer of violent discrimination she faces. I did want more explanation of her and Elise’s backstory. More flashbacks maybe? I kept expecting a major one that would show the attack when they were thirteen, but that didn’t happen. I was also surprised that she was so down to try an experimental cure when the whole thing was White Doctors Experimenting on Black People 2.0 and she was rightfully wary of everything else.

Elise was also a strong character. I liked her relationship with her sisters and how she became the protective older sister for Josi, like Charlotte did for her. The scenes where she played piano and sank into the music were beautiful. I felt the toxicity with Elise’s father and that emotional abuse; that made me feel really sad for her, and I understood why she kept bowing to her father/abuser. However, her privilege really rankled me at times, mostly in conversations with Layla, but I get that that was part of her character.

The side characters were largely forgettable. I appreciated how Layla and Elise both had strong personalities, but everyone else just kinda appeared and then vanished and I didn’t care. Jamie might have been the most distinct one. I did like him and his son.

I unfortunately had a very difficult time with the writing style and that’s where I take off another star. One thing that bugged me was the use of reporting verbs. Sometimes there’d be long passages of speech and then a verb right at the end, instead of at the beginning where it’s more natural (like “she muttered”), or two verbs in one paragraph (“she said” towards the beginning and then “she said bitterly” again at the end) when only one, or none, was needed.

I also had a thing about the contractions. Sometimes they were used in a sentence along with non-contracted base words (“haven’t” in the same sentence as “did not”), meaning the sentences flipped between informal and formal and sometimes back again. I’m aware these are little grammatical things to focus on that have more to do with editing than the book as a whole, but they kept jerking me out of the little movie being painted in my head.

This had a lot of potential, but I think it needed a bit more cooking.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

this book was absolutely amazing! i will definitely be reading everything hayley dennings has to write!

longer review to come

I received this book as a digital arc from Netgalley in exchange for a review. Thank you!

1920s sapphic vampires? Sign me up! Loving the new resurgence of vampires in the literary world.

While I loved the representation and the backdrop of Harlem, I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I had hoped. The pacing was all over the place, world building was a bit lacking and some of the choices made by the characters left me scratching my head in confusion and taking me out of the story.

I’m still curious where the story will go next, so will probably pick up the sequel when it comes out. Definitely recommend if you enjoy dark, vampire romance.

This was such a dark read and I loved it! It was a very exciting read as it is full of secrets, death and romance.

Black sapphic vampires set in 1920s Harlem, this books premise was fantastic but the execution was a little bland for me. It features childhood best friends to enemies to lovers, an interesting mysterious storyline and how the 2 MCs reconnect after being estranged for 5 years.

I’m interested in seeing where this duology will go. 3.5 stars.

this was an absolutely stunning debut, i feel like i'm back in the resurgence of vampire novels, there really needs to be more 1920s vampire novels

As a mostly contemporary romance reader, this book was definitely outside of my usual comfort zone but I decided to give it a try when it was available on NetGalley for everyone a few weeks back. I'm really glad I read it but ultimately this book ended up being a bit of a miss for me. This may have partly been because of my own inaccurate expectations but I was expecting a bit more romance from this book, and unfortunately the romance that was there just wasn't quite believable to me. I was left wondering why these two characters cared or were invested in one another, especially when I found one of them quite annoying and insufferable for most of the book. The pacing was also a bit off for me, where the middle part of the book was a bit tedious and some elements of the ending happened in a rush. The main plot of the book is focused around a mystery that Elise and Layla are required to team up to solve but the actual mystery elements of the book happened so slowly that I started to lose interest, even though I was intrigued at the outset. I also thought some elements of the worldbuilding were a bit lacking or underdeveloped though I did find the atmosphere and setting of 1920s Harlem really interesting and vibrant.

All that being said, I may still read the second book in this duology as I will be curious to see where the author takes this story; I think the writing itself is strong, and the themes she is working with here are interesting. I think there's a lot of potential for this author to grow and develop in her craft. I have added my review on Goodreads here and will also be posting about it on TikTok closer to publication date.

This is an author & book I have been following for a year now. When this book became available on Netgalley I actually think I cried tears of joy!!!

I absolutely love the setting of this book. I love the characters, & the trials & tribulations they had to go through. Parts of this book had me yelling at the pages, other parts had me smiling soooooo widely my face was cracking.

Absolutely loved & I cannot wait to devour whatever Hayley comes out with next.

DNF'd at 18%.

I really wanted to love this book - I was so excited to read it. The idea of 1920's Harlem vampires was promising and the multi 3rd person POVs pulled me in.

The writing though, is a bit choppy and lacked world building details. There is hardly anything that set the stage in the beginning to make us feel like we were really in Harlem. I usually complain of too many details, but this one gave nothing. We hopped to quickly from one event to another.

I have been in a bit of reading slump so that may be affecting my opinion but I just can't get into this book.

Rated 2 stars. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC ebook.

Set in the vibrant world of 1920s New York, this novel is a thrilling blend of urban fantasy and mystery that had me on the edge of my seat.

The atmosphere Dennings creates is absolutely stunning. I was totally immersed in the bustling streets of New York, with its hidden secrets and dark alleys. While I wished for a bit more detail in the world-building, the overall ambiance was undeniably captivating.

The murder mystery aspect added an extra layer of intrigue to the story, keeping me guessing until the very end. I loved how Elise and Layla, despite their complicated history, were forced to team up to unravel the truth behind the brutal killings. Their dynamic was electric, and I couldn't get enough of their intense chemistry.

Dennings's writing style is kind of poetic. The way she delves into the inner struggles of her characters and explores their growth throughout the novel is truly remarkable. Elise and Layla are both incredibly complex and compelling, with vivid personalities that leap off the page.

However, I have to admit that the pacing was a bit slow for my taste. While I enjoyed every moment with Elise and Layla, I found myself wishing for a bit more action to keep things moving along.

"This Ravenous Fate" is a must-read for anyone who loves a good mystery with a side of supernatural vibes. Dennings has created two unforgettable protagonists in Elise and Layla, and I can't wait to see what she has in store next!

received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This Ravenous Fate is a historical novel about two former childhood friends, now bitter enemies who must work together to solve a murder.

I liked the prose and the way the author described every single thing, I'm pretty sure I'd read her grocery list too WOW. I liked the topics of minorities and privilege, and whether to be satisfied with the bare minimum or demand more.

And lastly, I LOVED the enemies-to-lovers plot. This is how you write it. There is so much betrayal and anger and fear between them and watching them fall in love was *chefs kiss*

Overall, this was again, another solid five stars.

I wouldn’t ordinarily rate a book I didn’t read much of but I feel like the issues I found should be known, and NetGalley won’t let me post without a *.

I was so excited to read this but the writing style is just not for me. Its constant short sentences and too much punctuation, this takes away from the flow. it just felt so broken up and I quit after 20 pages.

Wow this was a thrilling read with twist that I didn't see coming and I was shook for much of it. i never thought I needed another vampire book, but this proves how wrong I was and I am utterly obessed with this book now.

Thanks sourcebooks fire and NetGalley for this ARC.

Where do I start? It's 1926 and reapers, the once-human vampires with a terrifying affliction, are on the rise in New York. But the Saint family's thriving reaper-hunting enterprise holds reign over the city, giving them more power than even the organized criminals who run the nightclubs. Eighteen year-old Elise Saint, home after five years in Paris, is the reluctant heir to the empire. Only one thing weighs heavier on Elise's mind than her family obligations: the knowledge that the Harlem reapers want her dead.


A book with this premise and has a queer black protagonist? Are you even kidding me? I cannot tell you how high my hopes were and how quickly I finished this book. Every page in this fantasy whodunnit is filled with descriptions of a world that we know as the age of excess through Scott F Fitzgerald… and every page in this book just hooks you to read the next. I think if I could give it more stars. I would. I cannot wait for the next book.