A girl who can speak to gods must save her people without destroying herself.
A prince in danger must decide who to trust.
A boy with a monstrous secret waits in the wings.
Together, they must assassinate the king and stop the war.
In a centuries-long war where beauty and brutality meet, their three paths entwine in a shadowy world of spilled blood and mysterious saints, where a forbidden romance threatens to tip the scales between dark and light. Wicked Saints is the thrilling start to Emily A. Duncan’s devastatingly Gothic Something Dark and Holy trilogy..
Goodreads
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review
My Rating: 3 Stars
Let’s talk about hyped books for a moment. Have you ever read a book that had been built up to you for months? I feel like going into books with such high expectations will leave you disappointed almost every time. Wicked Saints has been EVERYWHERE for months, and it sounds incredible. Who doesn’t love a dark, gothic read? Unfortunately, for me, Wicked Saints fell just short.
Let me explain. The overall premise is fantastic. The landscape of the story is magical, deep and dark. The characters were intriguing to me from chapter one, and the plot picked up immediately – at no point over the course of the novel was I bored. I honestly think that all of the bones for an incredible read are here and I desperately hope that the rest of the series builds on those bones and turns into something incredible.
What fell short for me in Wicked Saints was execution. The whole book was this massive build up to the ending. Throughout, there were things that weren’t well explained but I kept telling myself “This will all be explained at the end, in the big scene the book is clearly building toward.” The issue? Nothing was explained. There was this big reveal at the end of the novel that surprised me, and then the book sort of just…ended – leaving me frustrated, confused, and wanting answers.
To me, there is a difference between a cliffhanger, and an unfinished ending. The ending to Wicked Saints felt unfinished to me because there was just so much information that I felt was needed to understand what happened, and I was provided none of it. It was frustrating and changed what might have been a four star read, to a definite three star read for me.
All in all, I desperately want answers. Duncan is definitely a talented author, writing a world that I really want to know more about. Hopefully in the next two books the story she is trying to tell becomes clearer and her readers are given the information they need to make sense of it.
As The Book Ends 