.png)
Title: One For My Enemy
Author: Olivie Blake
Pages: 413
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date: 14th June 2022
Blurb from Goodreads:
From New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes a
tale of two rival witch families in modern day New York City,
fighting to maintain control of their respective criminal
ventures.
On one side of the conflict are the Antonova
sisters, each one beautiful, cunning, and ruthless, and their mother,
the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants known only as Baba Yaga.
On the other side, the influential Fedorov brothers serve their
father, the crime boss known as Koschei the Deathless, whose
community extortion ventures dominate the shadows of magical
Manhattan.
After twelve years of tenuous coexistence, a
change in one family’s interests causes a rift in the existing
stalemate. When bad blood brings both families to the precipice of
disaster, fate intervenes with a chance encounter, and in the
aftershocks of a resurrected conflict, everyone must choose a side.
As each of the siblings struggles to stake their claim, fraying
loyalties threaten to rot each side from the inside out.
If,
that is, the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy them first.
My Review:
*I received an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley*
There are two magical families in New York who have been at war for over a decade.
The seven Antonova sisters are led by their mother, who is known as Baba Yaga.
The head of the Fedorovs is called Koschei the Deathless and he has three sons.
The enmity between the families is reignited, and loyalties are tested.
Which family will come out on top?
Having read a few of the author's other books and being disappointed, I was a little wary to pick up this one. However, the blurb intrigued me, and I thought I would give it a go.
There are several protagonists, and while Sasha was probably my favourite, I didn't feel that I connected with any of them. This made it hard to care about what happened to them.
I wasn't a big fan of the romance - it was way too instalovey for me, as I prefer a slow burn.
There wasn't much world-building, and I don't recall the magic system ever being explained.
I enjoyed the plot to begin with, but as it went on, I found myself losing interest and I ended up being glad when the novel finished. I wasn't invested in what happened, and I thought the novel could have been made shorter. It felt like a lot of things happened, but also at the same time that not much happened. Some of the events were a bit random to me, and I didn't understand the motivations of some of the things that happened.
I'm not a big fan of the writing style, and it will take a lot of persuasion for me to pick up another book by this author, as I think perhaps they're just not for me.
I'm disappointed that I didn't enjoy this more.
Overall, this was a mixed read.
