One For My Enemy Book Review
From Goodreads: In New York City where we lay our scene, two rival witch families fight 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.
Hello there, wonderful friends! I finally managed to settle down to read for a little bit this past week, so I wanted to share my thoughts on One For My Enemy. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t heard more about this book, especially since Olivie Blake’s other novels, The Atlas Six series have been selling like hotcakes (what even are hotcakes? Why is this a thing?) Admittedly, I couldn’t quite bring myself to love The Atlas Six and I gave up on the series at the end of book two, so I wasn’t 100% sure on One For My Enemy. The synopsis swung it for me in the end though, since it sounded so darn good I couldn’t pass it up. Thanks so much to Tor for the Netgalley approval!
The novel started out really strong. There’s a glorious Romeo and Juliet thread to the story, reinforced by quotations from the play at the start of new chapters. There’s also a bit of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in there (sorry, I had to read it for uni once and I’ll never forget it). The premise of the novel was fascinating to me too- magic and star-crossed love and betrayals and vengeance? Yes please! It was interesting to see how the characters all worked against each other, and how the lack of trust amongst them led to so many problems. There were times where I just wanted to shake one of them and tell them to stop hiding secrets and share for goodness sake, but unlike some novels where the miscommunication is annoying and questionable, it made a lot of sense here. The writing is, as usual, beautiful. There’s some stunning descriptions packed in here, and they always make the world Blake writes about feel so realistic and wonderful, even while everything is falling apart and going to hell in a handbasket.
I will also say that the character development in One For My Enemy was a vast improvement for me from previous books I’ve read by the same author. While I still think there was room for the main characters to be fleshed out more, they are distinctly different from each other and it was always clear whose perspective you were reading. Sasha was probably my favourite, since she was so sweet and constantly trying to do good, and I thought it was a nice refreshment from the backstabbing and manipulation the other characters all seemed to employ with ease. That’s not to say she was perfect, and she definitely made mistakes, but it seemed like her heart was in the right place and I liked her.
The romance was a bit rushed for me, though. As much as I adore a good star-crossed romance full of angst and longing glances, it felt like the reader didn’t get enough of an insight into what was happening. The novel moves quickly, which can be a blessing at times, but the problem is that it never spent enough time on the characters falling in love with one another. I get that there’s a lot of tension and stress and stuff, which makes people behave differently, but it was a bit weird to hear characters saying those three words to one another after only a couple of chapters and one or two scenes where they almost hook up. Part of it is also that some of the time passes off-page (off-screen, whatever you want to say) so maybe it isn’t quite as rushed as it felt, but it didn’t quite sell it to me either way. The rushed timeline also causes problems when the plot becomes very… convoluted. This was one of the things that didn’t gel with me with The Atlas Paradox, and I had hoped that a story in a less academic setting might mean some of the complexity and explanation stuff were stripped back, and for about 90% of the book, that was true. But right towards the end, the author propels the reader through twist after twist, secret after secret, and it overloaded the story for me. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, but it definitely is something that might talk me out of trying another of Olivie Blake’s books in the near-future.
Overall, I’m giving One For My Enemy:
It started out very strong and I loved the premise of the story. The characters were well-written and had a lot of depth to them, which I appreciated, and the descriptions and prose were beautiful. However, I do think the plot raced over the romances in a way that left me wanting more and feeling like it was a bit too sudden, and the plot got convoluted towards the end in a way that made it hard to follow.
Has anyone else read this book or plans to? What do you think about it? Let me know by joining in the discussion in the comments section down below! <3
