Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - These Hollow Vows

I’m hooked. This formula will always work on me. The human girl that the two princes can’t get enough of. Fighting over her. It’s explained more why they are so interested in her later and then you REALLY get into the story. It seems simple and cute and romantic at first and her love for her sister driving her mission makes you love the protagonist. But once you really start to see that every single character is a lot deeper that they appear and every single one has multiple motives, then it gets interesting. The ending was a total cliffhanger and I immediately got the next book in the series and will be reading it very soon. Excellent book. The similarities to so many others romantasy books is the only reason it’s not 5 stars for me. But I’d still recommend to anyone who even wonders about this genre. This book is excellent and meets my high standards around romance. There’s not enough smut for sure, but the little that there is, is 🔥

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elskede's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-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? It's complicated

4.0

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rinku's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.0

I’m not trying to be mean, but These Hollow Vows is your classical YA/NA fantasy written by an author who normally just writes romance. The world and magic system are not thought through enough, and the biggest focus of the story is the romance.

After Brie’s sister gets taken into the faerie world, she decides to smuggle herself into a competition to marry Prince Ronan and hopes to solve the mystery around the place her sister is and her two love interest which are coincidentally both princes from opposing kingdoms. Yeah, sorry for the bad summary but there’s not much else going on in this story. I wasn’t the biggest fan around the whole marriage competition that isn’t mentioned in the German synopsis – if it was, I probably wouldn’t have read the book because I don’t like this trope. Here, we never even see the other contestants which was so silly. Even more silly was Brie’s behaviour when she learned that

Sebastian was Prince Ronan. I didn’t really understand why it’s now a problem for Brie that she loves him. Her behaviour towards him just didn’t make sense

Other plot points were really predictable, like

Ronan having a relationship(?) already with someone else, Brie being the true queen, or Brie turning into an Unseelie in the end. I also really hate the concept of bonds because I don’t like this deterministic idea that people are “fated” to love each other, and the idea is often quite heteronormative

. Furthermore, conflicts could’ve been resolved way more easily if the characters decided to talk to each other for once. It also isn’t explained why, towards the end,

Brie doesn’t just ask Bakken to bring her to her sister

. At least the finale is nicely dramatic.

Probably the worst moment though was when Brie gets really drunk – and of course then also horny – in like the middle of the novel. This whole section just made uncomfortable and was so cringe, just like Finn’s reaction. We also have Kane who says that he would’ve taken advantage of the situation, yikes. The sex scenes were kidna cringe as well, especially how Brie asks if it’s a bad thing that she’s a virgin, I thought we were done with this stuff.

Looking at the magic system, there are some interesting ideas introduced but not really developed. The star worms and what they were called at the beginning seemed interesting, but they’re not mentioned anywhere later. Most of the magical things have some loopholes that the author didn’t think about, and for a fantasy book, there was not really a lot of magic generally.

The characters of the stories are so cliché as well. Brie is a quite unremarkable character, and I don’t know what to think about her. She annoyed me with her “not like other girls” stuff, like don’t liking dresses. Of course, she also lives with her mean aunt and mean female cousins. Like I’ve mentioned, the story lays a big focus on the romance. We have two love interests, both are of course tall and muscular, centuries-old, and both of course fall in love with our main character – and I liked neither of them. It’s so obvious that she will end up with Finn. I haven’t read ACOTAR and don’t plan to do so, but even I know that Bash will be the Tamlin of the series.

My review reads quite negative, but I still gave These Hollow Vows three stars. I had fun with it, even though not everything made sense or was developed in satisfying way.

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emis_books's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious tense fast-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? It's complicated

4.25

It was good, but sometimes it missed that little part to “oh my god i need to continue reading, i can’t stop”. But at some point it took turn after turn and i couldn’t put it away. Easy to read.

Content Warnings

smuttymcbookface's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

There's so much to unpack in this!

First of all, I the fantasy and plot are easy to understand and get into, though I found some information was a little too glossed over or given at convenient times.

The characters were interesting, and flawed, but a little one-dimensional. Sometimes I wondered why the FMC was allowed to get away with things, and why everyone was willing to uproot their principles for her.

However, it was easy to read, and the plot kept me enthralled.

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urmm's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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viselik's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

At first, I just thought this book was boring and predictable but then it just started to get worse and worse. The book only gets good in the last 30-ish %, but I still had numerous issues with this book.

Please look up content warnings for this book, it deals with some pretty dark topics and the version I had did not have any content warnings in it.

1) There is no content warning and this NEEDED to have one.

There is a fucking
concentration camp
in it and there was no warning about it before we find out about it. We find out about it in Chapter 15.
Emotional manipulation is a super big thing in this book, there is no warning about that.
- Like the entire character of Ronan/Sebastian should have had a content warning

The whole plot twist about Sebastian actually being the prince is just so bloody predictable if you have read romances before. He's written like a love interest for crying out loud.

Once we learned that Prince Ronan was missing I instantly knew that Sebastian was Ronan. It was too obvious to me after we had it stated that Sebastian was going away the night after the first day of the ball.

3) The naming system of this world. Characters and the land.

We had the Seelie lands, the Unseelie lands and the Wild Fae lands... This just felt too basic for me.
Then there are the characters.
Let's start with the main character's nickname, Brie. That is a cheese, a rather smelly cheese. I may or may not have just started calling her cheese girl.
The two love interests! We have Ronan/Sebastian and... Finnian. I was left slightly disappointed by these.
- Finnian's uncle is called Mordred or something like that and his father was called Oberon. I expected more considering the name of the people around them.

Content Warnings

kassidyreads's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

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

3.0

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