An incredibly bold and gripping book that left me speechless while also making me not want to shut up about every little thing that happened and how much meaning it had on the characters and overall story.

Avni is such a complex character with her own peculiar feelings and desires, and she’s written in such a way that makes you want to learn more about her, her life and why she’s this insatiable and the actions she takes to satisfy her hunger. You get to see her meet different people and how she feels about them, have wildly different experiences and how these change her, understand her past and how that has impacted her present and the way she goes about life. It’s a disturbing, compelling and intriguing story all at once, and no matter how much you think you know Avni, she keeps showing new sides of her that make her even more interesting.

There’s a main theme in this story revolving around hunger and finding ways to fill that void that is so well explored and written. Avni spends most of her time searching for things that can make her feel anything, that can make her full both physically and emotionally, and she tries to find that in sex, love and company, always going for more obscure and darker methods that most people wouldn’t usually accept, but to which she can’t step away from.

There’s also a deeper discourse with Avni being a woman of color and how men fetishize her and see her as merely an object for their own desire. It’s so casually incorporated into the story and Avni’s life that it’s easy to understand how this type of discrimination is so common to Avni as an Indian woman and you get to see her feelings on it and how this affects not only her but also her family.

The ending was so unexpected and brought such an interesting twist to Avni’s story while also helping to further understand her as this twisted but fascinating character.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins for the ARC!

Carissa Broadbent meant it when she said this was her darkest and most action-packed Nyaxia book yet and omg I loved every second of it!!!

Kyrene was everything and I’m actually in love with her. She’s such a well written character, strong, fierce and not afraid to do what’s needed to get to her goals even if that means having to sacrifice others. She also grows so much throughout this book and it’s so heartfelt to see that growth, to see her go from what it seems like an emotionless character that cares about no one to understanding she has a lot of caring that she tries to hide to protect herself and others.

If you’ve read the previous books in the series, you know Septimus isn’t necessarily a likable and easy character, but when I tell you I felt everything for him in this book. You get to see so many different sides of him (my favorite was soft Septimus, need a novella of him being soft for Kyrene on my desk by tomorrow thank you Carissa), understand so many of his past decisions, feel for his story and his past and why he is the way he is. While this doesn’t excuse a lot of wrongs he did to the past books’ main characters, there is a reason for it and you get to have that understanding.

I might start crying if I think too much about Kyrene and Septimus, cause I genuinely just loved them as individual characters but also as a couple. There’s a lot of yummy tension between them that gets really well explored throughout their journey, so much bonding over wanting to reach the same goals and bonding over past trauma that changed how they both viewed the world, both of them understanding each other and slowly starting to fall and care and wanting to protect the other. ahh they were just perfect stunning beautiful amazing.

One of my favorite parts about this series is the plot around the gods and this book delivered!! There’s so much focus around the gods and Kyrene and Septimus’ mission involving them, you get to understand a lot of gods that hadn’t been on the spotlight before, and just how much the gods impact the world they live in and the people in it.

I have such a special love for this series and this book just reminded me of why.

I’m in sheer awe after finishing this and I don’t even know what to do with myself, this brought me so many emotions and it engaged my brain in a way that kept me so invested through every single thing that happened.

This book makes you look at the story in a way that you’re always trying to guess what is happening and constantly making up new theories, connecting the characters’ actions to what is happening around them, picking up previous moments and connecting them to the present, and I just love how gripping the book is. Sure, you may have an idea of what is happening and have some theories in mind, but the story will always surprise you in a way, either with what is revealed or with the way it is revealed.

The pull that Evander and Laurie have towards each other is so compulsive and obsessive that it fits so well with the horror side of the story. These characters live and breathe the love they have for each other like the only way they can save themselves is by merging themselves together, with nothing else mattering. It’s not a sweet or kind love story but it is equally addictive.

The way this book encapsulates the horror genre was probably one of my favorite things while reading it. This is evident in the descriptions of the garden and the way it interacted with the characters, the gore being explicit enough that it makes you uncomfortable and even recoil at some parts and the way that some characters would act towards each other. A truly perfect queer horror story.

I can’t talk about a C.G. Drews’ book without talking about their writing. It’s so beautifully done from the detailed descriptions of the botanic elements and the horror aspect of the story, the way the characters would describe their feelings almost in a poetic way, there were so many quotes that I would read and I would have to just sit with it for a while because of how impactful they were (I may or may not have cried a little with how emotional some quotes made me).

I couldn’t help but compare this book to Don’t Let the Forest In, by the same author, because of how similar they are in themes and overall vibes, even if each book is unique in its own way, and if you liked one you'll most likely like the other.