Thank you NetGalley and the SparkPress for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book truly should have been perfect for me, True Blood meets Supernatural is such a cool concept that I would enjoy reading about. Sadly, I did DNF this book at 30%. The book starts with Olivia learning about her empath powers, the supernatural world and it's involvement in politics. I had a difficult time getting into the characters and following the story. I would have loved a bit more backstory before we got thrown into the deep end of this world.

I think the concept is super creative and will attract readers who are interested in the political side of supernatural beings.

This premise of this book was so intriguing and promising, but I just found it difficult to connect too. The writing felt jagged and abrupt. I couldn’t really relate to the main character Olivia. Her character was a little all over the place with her reactions. Elsa was interesting, but sort of hard to connect to as well.
It was definitely a fascinating start to a new series! I do plan to pick up the next to see what happens and if I can get more absorbed in that one.

Thank you to NetGalley and SparkPress for an ARC of this book!

The Others by Evette Davis

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Dystopian (hint)

Book One in The Council Series, it follows well-established political advisor Olivia Shepherd as she re-discovers her empath gifts running deep in her family's blood, thanks to a situation including her long-time enemy Stoner Halbert and a supernatural "familiar", a time-walker named Elsa.

This woman opens Olivia's eyes on San Francisco's people, many of them being otherwordly beings like fairies or vampires or witches. They call themselves "The Others", with some of them have their own agenda of watching over human race, sometime subtly manipulating through their gifts political elections.

This is The Council, a kind of UN organization, in which Olivia is recruited by head Gabriel Laurent, with her first task being a California election to the Congress.

Her job struggles with her intimacy, as Olivia falls head-over-heels for vampire William, whose opinion on humanity is less than favorable. Meanwhile, there are dark forces at work, forces which are a threat to Olivia and her Inner Circle.

...

Unfortunately, this book didn't work for me at all. I save Davis' writing, which felt fluid and enjoyable to read, but the plot is a perfect example of "great idea, terrible result".

This was meant as an urban fantasy with political intrigues. It felt like a contemporary novel on US politics. It felt so strange, especially because I was waiting for supernatural politics, and there was none in it. It's like I wrote a book on Italian/EU politics weaving it with witch folklore.

It was quirky but not in a way I liked. What was worse... were the characters.
I felt nothing for them, if not annoyance for someone (like Elsa the time-walker or Josef). They were innatural, behaving in a stupid and strange way, especially Olivia, who seemed not to perceive danger (and she's an empath).

The romance with William was insta-lust, but at least was warm, a little bit cheesy, but cute. I don't want to speak on the possible love triangle since the other he is unsufferable and useless (if not for drama). It ruined even the good drops of the romance.

In the end, I'm truly disappointed, and I cannot say I liked this book.

...

Rating: ★★

...

I want to thank SparkPress for the digital ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) via Netgalley. I'm not affiliated to the author, to the publishing house or any other person/agency. My review is honest and based only on my thoughts/feeling while reading the book.

Anais by The Bookish Scorpio

Thank you for the opportunity to preview The Others. This is very different and may be the beginning of a series.
Supernaturally written with all kinds of characters including time travelers, vampires and creatures this is really spellbinding and filled with unexpected twists.
Read this carefully to get the full experience.
3 stars

Ich habe mich über das Buch sehr gefreut. Es ist nicht nur fließend zum lesen sondern auch sehr spannend.

As soon as I read “True Blood meets Supernatural”, I knew I had to read it: Supernatural is one of my all time favourite tv shows and I couldn’t resist.
Sadly it was not what I was expecting. Like not at all.
It feels just like a more adult version of Shadowhunters, but not as good as the Cassandra Clare series. The characters felt all bidimensional and a little dumb (especially the protagonist), and I stopped trying to be serious and mature as soon as I read that the love interest’s name is William Ferrell, I will now have the picture of the actor Will Ferrell in his vampiric version stuck in my mind forever.

Olivia Shepherd’s journey back to her empathic roots pulls her into the hidden realm of supernatural beings in San Francisco, where she’s recruited by the enigmatic Council, a group with its own political agendas. As Olivia adjusts to this new reality, she starts uncovering unsettling truths about herself and the supernatural world around her.

While the urban fantasy setting is captivating and offers a fresh take on San Francisco, the story sometimes feels a bit formulaic, with familiar themes and character types making the narrative predictable at times. The focus on contemporary political issues can occasionally overshadow the fantasy elements, and the ending feels abrupt, leaving a bit of a gap in resolution. Despite these hiccups, the book remains an engaging read that provides a fascinating glimpse into a fantastical version of San Francisco.

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5 rounded up to 4⭐️! Thank you NetGalley for sending me an ebook ARC! I loved the supernatural aspect of this book, however I did not enjoy all of the politics involved in it. I understand that’s the main concept of the book but I feel like we could’ve learned a little bit more about the Others and their back stories. Overall I really enjoyed this book it is not my typical genre but it held my interest the entire time. It ended on a very good twist and I’m looking forward to book two already!

Give me more.
I have no words.This was everything I wanted in a paranormal story.Highky recommend.

This was a very good fantasy novel that I actually enjoyed. I really thought the characters and plot were interesting and am interested to see where the author goes next. Highly recommended!

Thank you NetGalley and the Publishers for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I unfortunately DNF(Did Not Finish) The Others by Evette Davis at the 11% mark. I had high hopes for this book based on the plot as we follow Olivia through a dystopian San Francisco encountering the usual supernatural creatures ( vampires witches, empaths etc) as she tries to awaken her own powers as a strong empath with the help of her spirit guide Elsa and best friend Lilly- who happens to be a fairy). On paper this book hits all of my buzz words and unfortunately everything was so disjointed that I had a hard time even understanding what was going on.

Aside from not being able to really follow or understand what was happening plot wise the characters felt so 2 deminsanl, one minute Olivia doesn't believe in magic and thinks she is having a mental break and the next she is acting like magic is going to save her form her supernatural stalker even though a page ago she didn't even know this "stalker" existed. We know every little form about Olivia from the beginning with very little backstory even though she got her gifts from her bloodline that isn't brought up unless its in a negative memory form her moms substance abuse. Elsa is another chapter that shows up as Olivia's spirit guide and expects her to just trust her and follow her every word without any questions- and for the most part Olivia does- which to me doesn't make much sense at all. I know that DNFing at 11% means I don't see if this resolves later in the book however with such little information about who we are following up front made it hard to want to continue reading this.

I would love to try Evette Davis in the future for any other books that may come out, the storylines in general sound really good and I would be intrigued to try another story by this Author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I’d like to preface this review by saying that while this read was entertaining, I did have quite a few issues with it.

Firstly, I’m not entirely sure how this qualifies as a dystopian read when we are dealing with present day politics while using terms like MAGA. I feel like I’ve missed something that’s never really explained.

The same with The Council. The beginning of the story we’re thrown into Olivia’s world without much context, which would be okay because we’re leaning along with her. Only we aren’t. A lot of things are glossed over and not explained. Ever.

The entire book felt rushed, and I feel like the wrong things were focused on. A lot more backstory would have been nice. And perhaps the author has that planned out for the other two books in the trilogy, but I won’t be picking them up.

The Others is a supernatural fantasy story about Olivia Shepherd, set in San Francisco and the surrounding area. San Francisco with it’s foggy days and history of colorful characters is the perfect home to The Others, supernatural creatures that call it home.

The story is about Olivia’s journey of discovery, the people she meets and loves along the way, and what work she does for The Council, a group composed of members of The Others.

I liked a number of things about the book The Others. The first part is set in and around San Francisco so it was good to read about some of my favorite spots in the city. There are also other locals in and around the Bay Area, however, reading about your favorite areas is not enough to recommend a book.

I did like Olivia’s character and her friends Elsa and Lily (how could you not like a fairy who is also a San Francisco librarian), but I did not care for many of the male characters in the story. William, her vampire boyfriend with his southern drawl felt forced (also too much like True Blood).

More importantly the first part of the book took its time getting going, got going very well and then just suddenly stopped. The ending was so abrupt that for a moment I thought I was missing pages. The first chapter of the next book (included) told me otherwise.

I would like to thank NetGalley and SparkPress for the opportunity to read and review this eARC

I’m sad to say that this book did nothing for me. I skimmed 2/3 of the book because I didn’t get into it. The world building is chaotic and sometimes hard to understand. The writing is not cohesive, like the author has not find her style when it comes to writing.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the free ARC.

A book about all facets of the supernatural. Warning: graphic sexual content. A fantasy book about an innocent woman drawn into the world of beings living side by side with humans she’d never imagined. Set in present day San Francisco, every day events take on new meaning. Fast paced with romance, intrigue, murder and betrayal, it takes off running and never slows down. This is the first book in a trilogy, the second book not due out
until early 2025.

I received this book as an advanced review copy and this is my honest review. I publish my reviews on Goodreads, TheStoryGraph and Amazon.

I had a hard time getting into this book and then a hard time continuing to read it.

The author's writing style threw me off quite a bit. The beginning didn't feel super clear in terms of writing, word choice and flow. It felt clunky and scattered. Maybe I'm being a bit picky, but at the beginning of the story, readers need a reason to read and when prose gets in the way of that, it takes away from the story developing.

The world building is okay for me. I definitely felt like I had to guess what was going on and why it was happening. If this is a dystopia, when I read it, I want to truly understand how we've gotten where we are and where we are going (rebellion!). There is a lot of focus on politics, which were very much aligned to present day politics. I feel like this connection also made it hard to see a future, dystopian society. Also, the Others are still a mystery. What do they really matter and why can't we as the reader see a clearer picture of what the Others do?

The characters are okay. They lack depth but this is definitely a story built by the characters. I always want more from characters, but I think they did enough to keep me reading through the story.

Overall, I'd love to see more time spent on world building and creating a clearer plot. The depth can come after that, but I think starting there will definitely help this story.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The Others was an interesting read! It took a little while to get hooked on the story. Overall, I enjoyed the book!

Thank you to NetGalley & the Publisher for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

I'm a little conflicted what to rate this one. I think ultimately I want to give it 3.5 stars, & am rounding it up to 4.

It started off a bit rocky for me. I really didn't like her writing style, and I didn't like our main character. The FMC just felt really unrealistic and bland. She was every FMC you've ever read in one person, and completely boring as a result. She would make weird, seemingly out of character decisions, but it never felt super out of character because she didn't have enough personality to really say exactly that. It just doesn't read quite right. Like the character feels like a caricature of a character. Not a real person. It feels like what you think a character would be like, not what a person is actually like. No one realistically reacts like Olivia does. I don't know, but she wasn't vibing with me.

A lot of what our FMC was thinking or feeling or doing felt "dumb". Just basically illogical. This made her feel like she was constantly breaking character. She's saying she's "so logical" and refuses to acknowledge her emotions, and then immediately turns around and acts like magic is real and that she's always believed in it, and that it's coming for her. Tell me how that works? Especially based off of what we know about her (seemingly not believing in "the gift" being magic? Or at least that's how I interpreted it). She's 0 to 100 really quick. She went from having realistic business disagreements with the guy to saying that he's basically torturing her mentally? And literally nothing happened except that he texted her a taunting message. Other than that literally nothing has happened with this guy. All this shit had me lost from the start.

To add to this, I kept forgetting we were in first person. I think was due to the huge exposition segments of text in the first 35% or so. I'd finally get back to a part where she speaks, and would immediately be reminded that we were still in first person instead of third. The author chose to explain everything in these giant paragraphs instead of letting the information come naturally or clueing us into anything. I would rather take three to five chapters to experience all of the "weird things" happening with Olivia, instead of just being told about it second hand by her familiar or whatever. Like, why can't we just take a second to do some world building so we don't have all this exposition dump? Things just started happening really fast and for no reason. It felt really random and within sentences apart. Very jarring and confusing.

It works that way between characters too. 0 to 100% friends. 0 to 100% lovers. Etc. Things are just happening around these characters and they're all just acting like it's totally normal or that it's so obvious despite us, the reader, having 0 reason to play along with it.

Ultimately one of the major flaws in this book is the in world logic. I just found myself finding extremely obvious counter arguments to most of the things these characters were saying or concluding. Someone was like, "well okay but you'll never be able to make friends cuz who are you gonna tell about your abilities?" Like huh? She literally has an "Other" friend already, and she knows how to locate/sense them now. Why couldn't she just make new "other" friends?

My initial question, that I don't think was ever truly answered, was why these Others want to help the humans at all in the first place. What's the gain? They could just have the world all to themselves and run it so perfectly they don't have to save anybody right? Why are the humans even integral to the plot? It's just kind of useless. I guess maybe it's because the Others have to live in the aftermath if the humans blow each other up, but still, where was the explanation in book?

**SPOILER**
I knew immediately that Gabe was her dad. You can't make it that obvious - having him making faces and hiding things, etc.
**END SPOILER**

This book was weirdly political. It is very specific to NOW, and she frames characters to outline the characteristics of Trump, and other known Repubs, etc. Which is annoying. I agree with most of her politics in this book, but I hated reading about it. It was presented like "hot takes" and didn't belong. I, like other reviewers, wanted it to be "Others" politics. Not American politics. I found myself completely skipping over these sections.

I did, however, like William and their relationship. The only parts in which I liked Olivia where the parts where she was interacting with William. Their relationship was the sole reason I rounded my review up to 4 stars, instead of rounding down to 3. I'm still confused why he picked her though of all people but I guess we wouldn't have the book without it so, meh. The relationship got stagnant after while because of obvious reasons. No conflict, no drama, so meh again.

The book really likes to date itself with not only the politics, but also its references. There's a section that references Tik Tok explicitly, and TWO different spots that refer to a statement on "X, formerly known as Twitter". I could see saying it once, but twice?

I think at like 75% she finally switches to 3rd person for a bit. It was unstated with no POV switch called out, but it felt super natural like it should have been that way the whole time. It finally felt like it was reading appropriately.

Then it just ends. I don't know, I kept wanting to read it to see where it was going, and Olivia's relationship with William was the main thing keeping me going. I didn't hate it, but I also just kept thinking how illogical some of the most basic things were. The logic was off, the delivery was off, the timing was off, Olivia kinda sucked, and ultimately it was just kinda bleh. I am interested in reading the remaining 2 books but I could also see myself forgetting to circle back.

Since this was a pre-release copy, the paragraphs and spacing between words would sometimes be really off which made it hard to read at times. I am assuming the formatting issues were a result of it being pre-released, but obviously I don't know. It was so bad at times, I think it was intentional just in case of copyright issues, though I've never seen that from any other publishers so not sure.

Overall, 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. We will see if the 2nd book gives this series a little more life!

‘The Others’ by Evette Davis is an urban fantasy, strongly influenced by politics. The story follows the main character Olivia as she becomes aware of her paranormal identify and world around her. I did enjoy that the main character was older, being in her thirties which was refreshing in a fantasy book.

A key theme in this book is American politics. As a reader in Europe I enjoyed this subplot, however it was glaring obvious the authors political views which may upset some readers.

The main reason for giving the book three stars was a lack of world building. As much as it is an urban fantasy and as such can be easily digested it was sometimes difficult to be fully immersed in the world especially in the beginning. I found that the further into the book the more I understood, however the balance between the politics and fantasy aspect sometimes felt conflicting. I almost would have enjoyed it more if there was a heavier focus on one aspect over the other. I enjoyed the politics and the supernatural plots but it felt as though they were separate books.

However, the exert from the next book gives me hope that this book is mainly to establish the world and background and will provide more harmony between the two main plots.

Overall, I’d say if you are a fan of fantasy books such as Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter books, this would be up your street! The characters were enjoyable and the romance was good. It’s mainly dialogue and so a quick and easy read!

“They call it the Gift, but I have never seen it that way”. Olivia tried to reject who she was, but fate has come knocking and thrown her into a parallel world full of witches, vampires and more.
The novel had a sound concept, and as a long-time fantasy fan, the idea of a different world hidden in plain sight is always intriguing.
Olivia is passionate and driven, with strong ideals about how the world should be. I particularly enjoyed reading about her relationship with William; a tall, attractive and mysterious vampire. Despite William being jaded about the world, he is always the perfect challenge for Olivia.
Despite knowing Olivia was a political consultant when starting this book, the heavy amount of politics involved in the plot was surprising. The author made it very clear where she sits in politics, and whilst that isn’t inherently a bad thing, this heavy use of real-world politics brought me out of the novel and disturbed the fun, fantastical elements of the story. I wanted to know more about the Others and the Council, not Republican/Democrat American politics. Maybe we need to wait for more instalments of the series, who knows!
Overall I enjoyed this story and the characters within. I would recommend this book as a fun, easy to follow and light urban fantasy read.