Reviews with content warning for Body horror - The Book of Azrael

I love this book and these characters so much. The communication between our main characters is so good. The banter is amazing. World building is woven in so well into the story. The ending is shocking and the story is just so great!

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sfdogmom's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny lighthearted mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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nikkisreadingx's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

My Hunger Games trauma is going to prevent me from rating this until I get through the review so let's go.

Notable things:

- The enemies-to-lovers trope is *really* well done. I don't like this trope when it's not fantasy or dark romance and often times, I feel like it's too rushed. It wasn't with this one. At all. The development of Dianna' and Liam's relationship is so...real. They hate each other for so long until they don't, and then they realized they hadn't hated each other for as long as they thought. It was just beautiful and as soon as that started, I was hooked.

- The world building is unique. The lore is great. In the beginning, it felt very Revelations/Rapture, then became very Valhalla/Ragnorak as we got to know more in the book. I can see now that the twist is because Dianna is kept in the dark about so many things and watching it unfold was interesting.
But I would also call it a little...lazy? If that's the right word. This is called high fantasy, but you could replace 'Onuna' with 'Earth' and it would make sense, because practically everything on the world was a reflection of earth. How people spoke, how they dressed, the technology, the buildings, it was all what we see in real life. This book hit the mark on urban-fantasy with other worlds on different planets. Urban fantasy is my preferred, so this worked for me. If you're looking for a true high fantasy feel, I think it misses there.

- Dianna's personality is fair and makes sense and is entertaining at times, but some of her snark is too immature for a centuries old warrior. However, I *loved* her character growth. So while her commentary was annoying in the first half of the book, it's welcome and endearing in the second half of the book. I didn't quite pinpoint when that shift happened (probably around the time she starts helping Liam with his nightmares), but it was really nice to see her grow and lose a bit of her bravado in favor of confidence in herself.
(I also could have done without the 'evil villain' clothing descriptions every time she got dressed in the frist half of the book. Why are they always the same?)

- The pacing of this book is a little off. The beginning took me forever. Mostly because it was a trauma dump. High stakes from page one, no moments of rest, I couldn't dive in because it was too much. When Liam was introduced, I thought there would be a break -- nope. He's as broken as she is. (Which, I will admit, had me curious to their story and helped me set aside time to continue reading even when I just wanted to dive into something sweet and happy.)
However, when it gets *going*, when Dianna is with Liam and finally removed from Kaden, I was sucked in. Completely. I went from reading 50 pages a day to 250 pages in one sitting. I only stopped because I knew I needed to a break before I got to the end.

- The ending. I hate cliffhangers in books and that's part of why it was slow going for me to get into this book. I also was under the impression this was a duet, so to finish this book and find out the sequel also has a cliffhanger?? 😤😭 But let's not get derailed there.
Part of the ending was predictable from the very beginning -- see: Hunger Games trauma -- and part of it was just heartbreaking. I don't like trauma porn, which was so much of the beginning of the book, that now, to see how much further it goes, how Dianna *cannot* be allowed to be happy, ever, it makes me very hesitant to continue reading the series. Especially when I don't know when the end is finally going to happen. I will because it was really good and I want to know how Dianna and Liam finally fall in love and I want to see how Liam helps Dianna heal in the next one, but I know I will struggle starting that book because it's just going to hurt.

As soon as I got into the book, I loved it. Even knowing what was coming, even knowing that I would hate the ending, even knowing that there wasn't a happy on the horizon for anyone, I couldn't help but love it. And I'm really interested to see where it goes.

Also -- don't go in this expecting spice. He fingers her, she blows him, that's all you're getting between these two in the whole 500 pages of the book. It makes sense -- because they're proper enemies-to-lovers -- but seeing people give this more than half a chili for spice meter is giving me all sorts of dissonance.

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brooketreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Conflicting feelings on this one. Overall, I enjoyed the overall plot and the two main characters. I was invested in Dianna and Liam’s slow burn romance. I love Liam. However, the only spice we got in this book I could have done without, because honestly it just felt unsatisfying… like this is not what they deserved after what they had been through in this book up to that point. The ending I saw coming, maybe not in the exact way it happened, but I feel like everyone had to know it was going to happen.

This felt too long. I also felt like too much was going on. There’s too many people to keep track of and too many places they went. I felt like I should have been reading this with a whiteboard of characters and places. I didn’t always feel I had a clear picture of the setting. I felt like there were plot holes and things just thrown in to further the plot. Such as Tobias having the ability to re-animate the dead. I don’t recall it being mentioned before the tomb raider scene.

I will say I did jump straight into book two. So, take from this review what you will.

Some of my favorite notes:

“Grand Estate?” I sighed, mostly to myself. “Oh, fancy. I guess it’s a good thing we brought our party clothes.” LOL!

(Context: Dianna to Liam. They had just gone through a horrible crash and then a fight. They looked terrible.)

When Liam was fighting Tobias and he has raised the dead and they all stopped and patted themselves 🧐 umm ok

Dianna drinking Liam’s blood 😂 very Edward drinking Bella. I imagine Dianna with that same crazy look 😂

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sarahjanehayes's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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booksalacarte's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

3⭐️ 2🌶️

Badass/morally grey FMC
Enemies to lovers
Slow burn
Forced proximity
One bed
Quest
Forbidden romance
Fight scenes
Dragons
🏳️‍🌈 rep
Cliffhanger

Seems to be dual POV. The beginning started off with interesting world building and introduced us to the FMC. The magic is interesting. I have to admit that I’m still confused about quite a bit, but I’m thankful that the magic doesn’t look like every other romantasy out there. I think it was a little clogged in its delivery.

A god with PTSD…Liam/Samkiel a different kind of male main character. I applaud even if his character does feel like Thor after Endgame. He was fully flushed and by far the character holding the book together.

The slowest burn. Goodness gracious. They go from enemies-to-pretty much lovers, but not quite.

I didn’t enjoy how often things were repeated. Prose and stories told, in full, more than once. I found myself going, “yeah, yeah, yeah… I’ve heard this before.” It was really annoying. Then to just have to go through it again in the other POV. Yikes. The dialogue was also cringeworthy. Some of the general conversations were just not at all realistic in the way character spoke to each other and word choices.

The nature of Dianna was so immature when she wasn’t fighting. She is supposed to be almost a thousand years old? She acted like her emotional growth stopped in her early 20’s. She was written very YA. I wanted her to fight more so I didn’t have to deal with her immaturity.

The stakes felt high, until you read the line, “weeks later”… multiple times. Then you start wondering what the hell people are doing for those weeks! Nothing helpful or plot moving. Just twiddling their thumbs? I don’t want to be in the same PoV and suddenly have a plot blackout for weeks!

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