• Author: Olivie Blake
• Series: Standalone
• Genre: Fantasy
• No. of pages: 416
• Dates read: 06.07.2023 – 12.07.2023
• Star Rating: 4 stars

Plot: Viola Marek is a struggling real estate agent, and a vampire. But her biggest problem currently is that the house she needs to sell is haunted. The ghost haunting the house has been murdered, and until he can solve the mystery of how he died, he refuses to move on. Fox D’Mora is a medium, and though is also most-definitely a shameless fraud, he isn’t entirely without his uses—seeing as he’s actually the godson of Death. When Viola seeks out Fox to help her with her ghost-infested mansion, he becomes inextricably involved in a quest that neither he nor Vi expects (or wants). But with the help of an unruly poltergeist, a demonic personal trainer, a sharp-voiced angel, a love-stricken reaper, and a few high-functioning creatures, Vi and Fox soon discover the difference between a mysterious lost love and an annoying dead body isn’t nearly as distinct as they thought.

The first thing I want to say before we even get into this review is that Miss Olivie Blake has RANGE! Going from the Atlas Six to reading this book was like whiplash in a great way. There are still the classic elements of what make up a Blake novel but this was just so different and so well done.

Thank you to Tor and Netgalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

So, the biggest standout element of this novel for me was the characters. I did not hate a single character. They were all super fun, entertaining, interesting and layered. I didn’t matter the amount of page time they got I genuinely just enjoyed every character big or small. But I would have to say my favourite character was probably Marya. I just really liked her a lot!

Along with these amazing characters was some genuinely hilarious dialogue. The dialogue in this book is witty, smart and laugh out loud funny. I found myself laughing on my commutes to work watching the comedy of errors type conversations happen. Since the Atlas Six is quite serious and focuses loads of physics and academia it was such a great switch to have a more light-hearted, funny piece of writing. That doesn’t mean this book doesn’t have its impactful and emotional moments. Blake is still able to bring out her beautiful prose and poignant moments with just a lot more laughs in between. I am pretty sure I highlighted one beautifully written sentence every other page!

I also loved how Blake structured this story. This book is told through multiple POVs, multiple narration styles, different time periods. At times you don’t know why you are meeting this character until 50 pages later. This was written in such an interesting way that I couldn’t put it down and would feel sad if my bus pulled up to my stop and I had to carry on with my day.

That being said, you might be wondering why I didn’t give this book 5 stars due to how much I have been raving about it.

Well there are two things. One, this book talks about Viola and Fox equally yet I felt in the book that Fox was the main character and it was his story. I felt Viola, who gets a big billing, fades into the background and becomes more of a side character in her own story. I loved her a lot and I just wanted more from her.

The other thing was that while I loved how this book was structured. I felt there were elements of the plot that we purposely written to be vague but ended up reading as too complicated. I just felt that those more complicated moments needed to be fine tuned a bit more. It felt more like unnecessary mis-communication than purposeful reasoning.