First things first: Thank you to NetGalley, Hachette Audio, and Orbit for the ARC. Y’all have my thanks, per usual.

I don’t know where to start with this one because it is so different from anything I’ve read before. The only way I can describe this book is weird, campy, and meta. Long Live Evil is a dark and delightful read, that had an ending I saw coming from a mile away, which, shockingly, added to my love of it. This is a really unique story, though with some pacing issues, but if you're willing to look passes those then you're in for a lot of fun. There's a large cast of characters that can sometimes be hard to keep track of, but they are all pretty distinct once you get the gist of everything. I will say that Rae and her motivations did become blurry near the end, but I think that she followed the natural arc of her character, as opposed to becoming a “chosen one” archetype, or becoming an altruist and trying to save the world. She is literally just a girl with selfish motives, who turns the villain of the story into someone significantly more morally grey and acts as a mirror for the reader to reflect upon. Overall the story is engaging and interesting new take on the fantasy genre that asks the age old question: What you would do if you were put into a fantasy book as the villain?

Long Live Evil was a delight from start to finish. The narrator of the audio book is one that I have listened to before and she is lovely. The story itself took me by complete surprise. I have a family history with cancer and this element of the story almost made me DNF the audiobook, as dreaming of a way to save yourself while in the hospital can be cruel. However, once I got into the story and saw the twists and turns I was delighted. I love how the narrator was able to make the characters unique and full bodied with her cadence and inflection. There were points where the story seemed to drag, but upon completion all those elements were necessary to get the full story. There were plot points that I saw coming a mile away and some that took me by complete surprise.

I feel that everyone at one point has wanted to live inside their favorite story. This unique story blended elements of real life and fantasy so well that I was glad the story ended how it did. This is a fresh story that will entertain from start to finish.

Long Live Evil
Sarah Reese Brennan
4 / 5

Okay, so....

I put myself in the unfortunate predicament of having to review a book that's outside of genres I'm interested in.

Unfortunately this isn't my kind of book ... but, to be fair, that's totally on me. I typically don't read full synopsis for fear of spoilers (I'm looking at you, Motherthing) snd, in this case it did me a disservice because I went into the book thinking that it was going to be serving up a sci-fi horror moment... And that's pretty much exactly what we got was a mere moment. It's more of a romantic fantasy.
And romantasy is not my thing, personally.

But the writing was truly beautiful, and (for the most part) the story kept me engaged. (Hence my rating) I didn't have a single moment where I considered DNF'ing it. Brennan is a gifted author, that's for sure.

I also enjoy when we get stories told from the perspective of the "villain" character. That usually adds an intrigue factor, for me.

I dunno ... Despite it not being what I'd normally pick up, I enjoyed my time with it. And I can think of so many friends who are going to truly fall in love with this book.

Thanks to Netgalley, Hatchet Audio and Sarah Rees Brennan for kindly granting me access to the ARC in exchange for my review.

Oh my god I could not put this book down. I was already a fan of Sarah Rees Brennan and when you pair that with the brilliant narration and talent of Moira Quirk??? I will be recommending this book constantly. Cannot wait for the sequel.

3.5⭐️
Sarah Rees Brennan’s *Long Live Evil* is an engaging and darkly humorous exploration of villainy that flips the script on traditional hero narratives. Brennan's sharp wit and clever storytelling shine through as she gives us a fresh perspective on characters typically cast as antagonists.

One of the aspects I loved most about this book is how Brennan makes you rethink the concepts of villains and heroes. It’s a refreshing reminder that so much of what we perceive as good or evil is all about perspective. By diving deep into the psyche of her “evil” protagonists, Brennan challenges the reader to question the very nature of morality, making these characters relatable even as they tread morally gray areas.

I listened to this book as an audiobook, and while I’m a huge fan of the narrator from her other works, I found that the chaotic nature of the story made the audiobook hard to follow at times. I often found myself having to go back to the ebook to keep track of the plotlines. Additionally, I didn’t particularly love the Oklahoma drawl used for the main character; it felt a bit out of place and slightly distracting.

That said, the narrator’s overall performance was solid, as always, but given the complexity and fast pace of the story, I would recommend starting with the ebook for the first read-through. This will allow you to fully immerse yourself in Brennan’s intricate world without the risk of losing the thread.

Overall, *Long Live Evil* is a fun, thought-provoking read that challenges conventional ideas of good and evil. Fans of twisted fairy tales and villain-centric stories will find much to love here. Sarah Rees Brennan has crafted a tale that is as much about self-discovery as it is about embracing the darker sides of our nature. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a unique and entertaining twist on classic fantasy tropes.

**Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.**

Note- I did have an issue with my NetGalley download, but I was able to listen to this on another platform.

I really enjoyed Long Live Evil - there's such a unique premise. A girl experiencing cancer treatment gets dropped right into her favorite series.... however she discovers she's actually the villain.

This story has the best of high fantasy and perfectly mixes in humor and whimsy. I think this will be a forever favorite for a lot of readers!

I thought the audiobook was phenomenal and it's done in a way that I can see myself re-listening over and over! I'm so grateful to have been approved for an audio ARC!

This is, hands down, my favorite new 2024 read. The characters were fun, relatable and I was rooting for side-villianess the whole way. Clever and amusing nods to fantasy tropes throughout. Epic ending! Honestly I hope this remains a stand alone because it was perfectly executed. *chef’s kiss

Moira, narrator for the audio, gave a stellar performance. Loved every minute!

Big thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Book Group for this wonderful read.

I was kind of disappointed in this audiobook. I got about 17% in, and it just didn't grab me. The first and probably main reason is because the audio quality felt so low. It sounded like there was a constant echo behind the narrator's voice, like it was filmed in a large, empty room. The echo made it hard to understand what the narrator was saying so I had to constantly rewind to pick up various words or phrases. It was incredibly distracting.

While I think a lot of people would enjoy this narrator, I didn't love her voice choices for the characters. This book could have really benefitted from duel narrators.

I'll be finishing this book in physical form because the audio quality was just too distracting.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hatchett Audio for the advanced audio. All opinions are my own.

"Nobody gets a happy ending unless we steal one. We can do it we're villains."

This was such a fun and ambitious mise en abyme that's a blend of both fantasy and adventure with a touch of reality, delivered with heart, humor, and a whole lot of action!

I loved our FMC Rae! Inadvertently and deliberately altering the storyline as the story progresses, she comes to care for these fictitious characters like I did! I appreciated the drive she has and the chronic illness rep we get with the flashbacks concerning her cancer.

With themes of hope and resilience, Rae's journey is not just about escaping reality; it's about confronting her fears and battling the darkness within and around her. Villain style! Brennan's writing is both lyrical and poignant, and Moira Quirk's narration was perfection allowing you to feel every joyous, sorrowful, and violent action as the story unfolds.

The side characters were on point! I loved the Golden Cobra and Key the most. A The characters were loyal, broody, and their development throughout the book kept me fully invested. Cobra's little secret is when this book clicked with me! And Key's unhinged actions and attitude was so much fun.

Where the modern anachronisms could have come off entirely out of place, they were instead humorous and enthusiastic. IYKYK

If you're looking for a fantasy read that's a story within a story with meta humor, emotional depth, and a villainous adventure, I highly recommend this one!
Looking forward to where the story takes us!

Holy biscuits this was such a fun & witty ride! This audio sunk me so deep into the story it felt like I was watching a movie! Absolutely brilliant! Most fun read of the year! Villains definitely have more fun! 🤩 Anyways if you love books that are a book within a book this is your book. If you’ve always wondered what it would be like if you were to enter the book world of your favorite series, this is your book. If you are secretly a villain and definitely not a hero…this is your book. (Hero’s are overrated.)

I quite enjoyed this portal quest villain-forward fantasy.

When Rae, a terminally ill girl who shares a deep love for a Romantasy series with her sister, is dying and suddenly given the option to live—she takes it. The catch? She has to enter the romantasy world she has been reading about and complete a quest to survive. Otherwise, her physical body in the real world will dye, and her with it.

She ends up in the book as the villain, something she has never been before, and the takes it as a sign that it’s time for her to take control of her life, something she has never been able to do before due to her struggle with terminal illness.

From there, the adventure really begins.

The story is really fun. It is adventurous, humorous, and just campy enough to make it all work.

The one thing that brought the rating down a bit? Sometimes the pacing just felt…off. It was fast and then oddly slow and felt a bit like a jerking roller coaster.

🎧 The audiobook is narrated beautifully and I so enjoyed how the narrator brought the story by life. Highly recommend this format of the book. 🎧

✨ Thank you Hachette Audio and Netgalley for an audiobook ARC/ALC of this book! ✨

Loved this books!! I cannot wait for more in this series.

The book was meta in the best way. Rae was a main character easy to cheer for, even as a villain. Once she is inside the book she realizes a slight hitch in her plan… she doesn’t remember the books as well as she thought. She assembles a band of villains to help her and the journey is chaotic to say the least. I had a favorite character as soon as they stepped on the page.
Definitely recommend this one for someone who wanted to be thrown in a choose your own adventure book or is in their villain era.


🎧Moira Quirk did a great job narrating the audiobook! It was such a fun time. Once I got into the story, I did not want to stop. The pacing was great, the emotions and laughs were so great!

Thank you to Orbit Books and Hachette audio for my arc and alc.

Long Live Evil was a refreshing adventure that had me enthralled and happy to be along for the ride!

Rae is every fantasy reader if we were transported into our favorite fantasy books. She’s strong, witty, and sassy, and I loved experiencing the story from her point of view. I can’t express how refreshing it was so read this book! Rae’s morally grey (?) villainous tendencies were so fun to get behind and I could’ve read an entire series of her.

Perfect for fantasy fans who want to switch up their routine and get behind a flawed fmc who’s just a girl who loves to read, turned fantasy fmc with the power to change fate.

This was incredible and definitely one of my top reads of the year. It's deliciously campy and self-indulgent with a surprising amount of heart and Moira Quirk’s stellar audiobook performance makes it even better

Rae is dying when she’s offered the opportunity to save herself by stepping into the world of her favorite fantasy book series, only to find herself the condemned villain. Hijinks ensue. If only she remembered the plot better… but surely she remembers the important bits, right? Only, what is she to do when she keeps changing the story by accident and the things she clings to as indisputable truths somehow… aren’t?

With a cast of seemingly one-dimensional characters that keep on surprising you with hidden depths and delightful quirks and a plot so bad and cliched it somehow stumbles it’s way into being good. And that, of course, is the point.

Evil wins in this one. Or does it? At least it has cool sunglasses and a secret handshake that involves undulating one’s hand like a serpent.

I was delighted to discover (when I got to the ending and was like what? That cannot be the end!?) that this will be a series and I can look forward to more secretly good evil hijinks. I will be reading the next one as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Moira Quirk's narration is fabulous. The characters all have distinctive and memorable voices that suit their personalities. She does a fantastic job with the sarcasm and humor throughout and absolutely brings the book to life.

*Thanks to Orbit and Hachette Audio for providing an early copy for review.

What gives a story meaning? What gives a life meaning ?

Rae is dying of cancer when she is offered something too good to be true. She’s skeptical, but takes a leap into a reality she didn’t know existed into her favorite fictional world - Eyam. She wakes up in a body that she does not recognize, wearing clothes that are not hers. On the day she wakes, she is in the body of the villain of the story.

She is challenged to retrieve a special flower in . If she gets it, she will wake up in her original body, cured. If she does not, she will never return to the world she knows.

She finds herself having to stay alive and convince others she’s a prophet by sharing information that she knows to be true based on what she’s read. This is only the first test of many to stay alive in this make believe world, she will navigate who she can trust and who is an enemy.

“If enough people believe in something, doesn’t it become real?”

“Everything is a story…. Enough faith can make something true”


I loved this story within a story. The world building was unique in that the character was living in it and remembering the story as she experienced the world. I appreciated the humor of this book and while I do feel it was all over the place, I also loved it. So unique and fun!!

This is one of those books where you read the author’s note and give an extra star because wow.. I will say the beginning was a strong start, I got kinda confused in the middle, it came back together for me at the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette audio for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Out now !!

“Long Live Evil” by Sarah Rees Brennan is the first book in a new contemporary fantasy series. It follows a young adult, Rae, who is terminally ill. She is given a second chance at survival by a stranger offering a magical bargain: enter the fictional realm of her favorite fantasy series and find the magical flower that can cure her before her time is up or miss her chance and stay in the story forever.
Waking up in a fantasy world as the assumed villainess wasn’t her plan but Rae knows this story and what should happen. Using this knowledge to her benefit she sets out, assembling a group of villainous allies to help in her mission to find the flower and get back to her own world alive and cured.

This book is wholly entertaining, and I loved that it is told through the villian’s POV. Although there are parts that are silly, they clearly are intentional and meant to add to the perceived outlandish behavior of the character(s), which some may not find all that amusing and wish for it to be more serious, in which case this may not be the book for them. I enjoyed many of the side characters as well, more so than our main character, and am looking forward to seeing how their stories evolve in the next book.

The narrator did a good job throughout the book, and I enjoyed most of her voices for the different characters. She had good pacing and hit the marks on all the right spots.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

Haven't you just wanted to be the bad guy and not have to always "do the right thing"?

Well Rae is dying and doesn't have too much longer to live. That is until a strange woman comes into her hospital room and offers her the chance to live in her favorite literary world and possibly save her own life.

When she wakes in the book world, she finds she is the dark and evil villainess living out her last few hours on the even of her execution according to how she knows the book to go. However, good thing she has general knowledge of how Book 1 goes (she wasn't paying a ton of attention during that one) and she starts to try to cobble together a crew to hep her escape her fate.

I just know if someone gave me any sort of powers of foresight, I would not use those powers for good. I know myself well enough to know I am a bit more self serving than that at this point in my life. Is this book perfect, no, BUT is it fun? YES and you get to indulge in not having to take the high road all of the time and using other people to your advantage without feeling bad about it.

It's campy, fun, and very self-aware. I think it was a really enjoyable read. Just don't expect any sort of epic high fantasy, this is not that. This is a satirical romp and it's awesome.

"Isekai" is a trope that has gained popularity primarily in Japanese culture, featuring stories about characters transported to alternative worlds. In recent years, this theme has increasingly appeared in Western works. One such example is the book Long Live Evil, which, despite having the potential to explore this theme in an intriguing way, ultimately turned out to be disappointing.

The plot of Long Live Evil revolves around Rae, a girl dying of cancer who is given a chance to survive by entering her favorite fantasy series. The protagonist, taking on the role of the story’s main villain, must find a magical flower to complete her quest and save her life. Despite the interesting premise, the story quickly loses momentum as the fantasy world Rae enters is exceptionally generic and lacks depth. And in the case of isekai this is unforgivable. The author tries to give it uniqueness by introducing some vague magical items that can be used only by aristocracy, but this aspect remains underdeveloped, rendering the fantasy world nothing more than a bland backdrop.

Another issue is the uneven pacing and the excessive number of points of view. Instead of developing Rae's character, who should be the reader's avatar in this new world, the author focuses on POVs from side characters, such as the Golden Serpent and Marius, who dominate the narrative, pushing Rhae into the background. As a result, Rae, who should be the central focus of the story, becomes just one of many characters, preventing the reader from fully engaging with her journey. Additionally, the comedic elements based on contemporary slang and the inclusion of musical scenes give the book a parodic tone that doesn’t align with the epic fantasy promised in the promotional materials. Also, despite villainy being the main theme, once again we receive characters who only pretend to be evil while not doing a single evil thing throughout the whole book. In fantasy, we already had the era of „assassins who actually don't kill” and now it seems that we're entering the times of „villains who are actually good at heart”.

In summary, Long Live Evil is a book that had the chance to create an intriguing isekai story, but ultimately fails on many fronts. Although the author's style is accessible and easy to understand, the lack of a clear goal and the superficial approach to the theme leave the story feeling unsatisfying. Unfortunately, for me Long Live Evil was too simplistic and disappointing. I liked the audiobook though, as the narrator really tried to squeeze more out of this story than there actually was with their voice acting.

Everyone and their pet lizard always says 'this felt like The Secret History' about a dark academia book… but really, An Education in Malice is a spiritual successor to The Secret History. It's a dark academia retelling of Carmilla and S.T. Gibson's beautiful, evocative writing elevated the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC copy of this book, in exchange for this honest review. Long Live Evil is quite possibly my favourite new book. I have never been more seen than when I was reading it.

At its core, it's an isekai story: Rae went to bed as a cancer patient in her last stage of illness, and woke up as a healthy, vivacious villainess of a fantasy series her younger sister loves, Beauty Dipped In Blood.

Long Live Evil is for the manhwa-reading girlies who know the Otome Isekai tropes like the back of their hand and enjoy a good shake up to the original story's plot.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC copy of this book, in exchange for this honest review.

A fairly original isekai novel (if you don’t count the dozens of webcomics with this exact same premise) in which Rachel, dying of cancer, makes a bargain to enter her sister’s favourite novel series in order to win a chance to live. Easier said than done, as she wakes up in a complex Game of Thrones style world in which she is the villainess, on the day she is supposed to be sentenced to die… horrifically. Rae, now Lady Rahela, must think fast in order to live another day.

My husband and I listened to the audiobook on a long road trip, and it was entertaining but maybe a little long. It was also a little hard to follow who was which character (in audio form, could be easier as a physical read), as there are quite a few and everyone has their real name and then a GOT-style nickname (The Golden Cobra, The Last Hope, etc.) and then there’s the king who we know will be the emperor but he also has a given name, so he's referred to as all of those interchangeably. We would have loved a character guide. I did like the narrator, although her voice was so soothing sometimes I worried my husband would get sleepy while driving. Overall we liked the story and kept with it, and it did go in some original directions so it’s worth a read, especially if you enjoy the isekai genre!