In Love Lethal, Death Divine, we follow Liana and Melia - two women with seemingly nothing in common except their marriages to Amron (at different points in time) - as they fight for what their hearts want most. At first glance it may look like love drives them, but I’d argue it’s really about freedom: for themselves and for the people they love. The story explores what we’re willing to sacrifice, and how distance from the world you came from can reshape your understanding of it and of yourself.

The world‑building is top‑tier, the prose is gorgeous yet accessible, and the incorporation of Eastern Adriatic history and Slavic folklore is a joy. The characters and relationships are well developed overall, though I do wish we’d seen more of Ferisa and Melia’s relationship as it grew.

Although Amron sits at the center of the story, I wouldn’t call romance the book’s driving force. Time travel, gods, scheming, and political intrigue join together in that role. The ending never feels fixed, which creates delicious tension throughout - and the yearning is just 🤤

My biggest gripe is the lack of time markers at the start of each chapter, which makes the opening a bit confusing. The information is eventually woven in, but later than I’d prefer.

Love Lethal, Death Divine shares a universe with Ghost Apparent and Dark Woods, Deep Water, but it absolutely works as a standalone.

If you love fantasy driven by scheming, gods, political intrigue, complex family dynamics, well‑rounded characters, and a touch of romance, this one will hit the spot.

With so much respect to V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke, it’s bluntly obvious thriller/mystery is not their usual genre to write in. It felt like their focus when writing this book was on the commentary around the publishing industry and its hardships, which I do think was important here, but the mystery aspect was left to the side when this was supposed to be, in fact, a mystery book.

The premise is interesting and the book has a nice introduction that makes you want to feel invested in the mystery and who’s going to come out victorious in the end, but so much happens in the meantime that deviates from what was the initial plot and it just gets messy. The plot is not cohesive, it has no structure and it doesn’t feel like it has a purpose. There were a lot of moments that I would hope something would happen and when it did… it brought nothing to the story. Sure, a lot of it gets explained at the end, but it doesn’t have any actual impact or reason in the moment.

The characters were such a waste and so much more could’ve been done with them. We learn so much about them, with some having such interesting backgrounds and important reasons to want to win this competition, but again none of it is actually impactful. So much time is wasted on insignificant details, so many chapters in povs of useless (and infuriating) characters, not to mention the amount of plot points that I thought were going to come up later in the book and change the trajectory of the plot but that were just forgotten and never picked up again.

All of this for an ending that isn’t even satisfactory but instead predictable and dull.