Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - These Hollow Vows

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.

Content Warnings

kiwij96's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

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

4.5

ACOTAR meets The Cruel Prince, only better. The storytelling was honestly genius and the cliffhanger is stunning, I need the second book immediately.

There were a couple of times where I was confused by things that seemingly made no sense, or felt too rushed, but other than that this story is so well done. I was hooked immediately with the Cinderella style beginning. But then it just became something else entirely. I was honestly stunned at some of the twists that happened.

Content Warnings

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

Content Warnings

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

Content Warnings

cady_sass's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Okay hear me out: I know, objectively, this is not very good. The writing is very lackluster and repetitive and the book as a whole lacked editing. BUT if you have a fairy world fantasy itch that can’t seem to get scratched, this will do it. I really enjoyed this, despite the predicability and eye-roll worthy protagonist. It’s fun! So sue me. You get exactly what you expect, in my humble opinion.
Side note: there are a lot ( a LOT ) of reviews calling this an ACOTAR rip off and, while there are some minor similarities, I don’t feel that way at all. Sorry not sorry.

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