This was a highly anticipated release between the premise and the setting, but after finishing it I’m sitting here unsure how I feel about it.
Layla Quinn and Elise Saint were best friends until several years ago with Layla’s parents were killed and she was turned into a reaper. She especially blames the Saints and most especially Elise, because Elise betrayed her trust by telling her father, Tobias Saint, about Layla’s parents’ plan to help the reapers and meet with the Harlem clan. Because of the danger to her from the reapers, Elise was sent to France to study piano, and the story opens with her return to the city for a Saint event. When a friend of Elise’s is murdered by a young man who appears human in death but Layla remembers him as a fresh reaper, the girls are forced to team up to figure out what really happened and what’s going on with the reapers of Harlem, while also trying to clear Layla’s name.
This story definitely has a lot of potential and I think I would continue the series to see what happens next, especially with the grim reveal in the last few chapters, but also I’m feeling very eh about the whole thing. The setting was great – it’s hard to go wrong with 1920s Harlem – and I did love the reaper element of world building. The idea that vampires are a result of human experimentation of enslaved Black people (especially Black women) is a perfect starting point in so many ways, and I loved Valeria’s character a lot between her rage and trauma and history.
I think overall I loved a lot of elements of this book and the world, but I don’t know that I can root for Elise and Layla as a couple and I don’t know that all of the choices worked for me. I think I would still recommend the book, and I am curious about continuation of Layla and Elise’s story, but I also overall feel eh and conflicted on how I feel about the book. Maybe I wasn’t the right reader for this book, after all.