ARC Review: All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman

“Foody and Lynn write an amazing cast of characters, a deep and vicious world, and a high-stakes plot that left me staying up all night to finish.”
~ Under the Covers

Recommended Read!

Every generation there is a tournament. Marked by the Blood Moon in Ilvernath, seven families offer a champion to compete for a chance at immense power. High magick has been gone from the world since it was used up thousands of years go. The only remaining source resides in Ilvernath, tied to these seven families. Only one family may claim the magick after defeating the other six competitors by winning a fight to the death tournament. All involved have promised to keep this a secret… until now.

When I heard that this book was described as The Hunger Games with magic, I was immediately sold. And let me tell you right off the bat, I am not disappointed. Foody and Lynn write an amazing cast of characters, a deep and vicious world, and a high-stakes plot that left me staying up all night to finish. I was completely and utterly obsessed right from the start.

There are four perspectives in this book, even though there are seven champions. I was really impressed with the way Foody and Lynn wrote their characters. Each character had a distinct voice, so I never had an issue about telling whose story it was at the time. I give the authors a lot of credit because four unique perspectives is definitely difficult to write and balance. I didn’t expect my loyalties to change as I read, but they did. I am extremely impressed with the character development in All of Us Villains.

Something that worried me going into this book was that I was 1) expecting really dark characters and 2) I didn’t know how dual perspective from two authors would be. To address the first thing, I wish the characters were just a little more villainous. They were morally grey, at best, and I wanted to read about really ruthless characters. I hope this changes in the second books. Second, I loved reading the two writing styles. While different, they flowed so well together that it worked perfectly. I was pleasantly surprised, and I am absolutely going to pick up the next book.

If you read All of Us Villains, you shouldn’t be prepared for extremely dark characters. You should be expecting to fall in love with all of them for a different reason. I think anyone could find a character they loved in this book, simply because they were all so unique and different with deep, well thought out backstories.

A potential warning: this book ends on a MASSIVE cliffhanger. So, if you don’t like cliffhangers, I would wait until the sequel comes out. I know I will be buying as soon as possible because I need to know what happens.