This Vicious Grace (The Last Finestra #1) by Emily Thiede #bookreview #YA #fantasy #TuesdayBookBlog

On By Teri PolenIn Book Reviews

Three weddings. Three funerals. Alessa’s gift from the gods is supposed to magnify a partner’s magic, not kill every suitor she touches.

Now, with only weeks left until a hungry swarm of demons devours everything on her island home, Alessa is running out of time to find a partner and stop the invasion. When a powerful priest convinces the faithful that killing Alessa is the island’s only hope, her own soldiers try to assassinate her.

Desperate to survive, Alessa hires Dante, a cynical outcast marked as a killer, to become her personal bodyguard. But as rebellion explodes outside the gates, Dante’s dark secrets may be the biggest betrayal. He holds the key to her survival and her heart, but is he the one person who can help her master her gift or destroy her once and for all?

From the description, I knew I’d enjoy this book – I just wasn’t prepared for how much.

Poor Alessa. With the Divorando (a hungry swarm of demons bent on killing the citizens and destroying the island) countdown looming and everyone depending on her, she feels like a failure. Her power is so immense that it’s killed three partners, and few volunteers are in line to take their place. Much of the population have lost confidence in her, and several attempts have been made on her life – even from her own soldiers. She takes it upon herself to hire a bodyguard, someone who’s loyal only to her. Smart girl.

I loved Alessa and Dante, and their banter is one of my favorite things in this novel. She’s unsure of herself, desperately misses her family, and can’t trust anyone around her. He comes with a shrouded past and considers himself a bad person (he’s so not), and will defend Alessa to the death. He also stole my heart with his love of books. The supporting characters are nothing to sneeze at and add so much to the story – especially Kaleb and Kamaria. They start out bound by duty, but fear for their lives at the thought of being chosen as Alessa’s Fonte. By the end they become an exceptional, supportive found family.

This is an action-packed, compelling read, but the last 10% left me absolutely breathless. I couldn’t look away if I wanted. Seriously, there better not be a long wait for the next book. Life or death stakes, plenty of humor, slow burn romance, incredible action scenes, and clever banter make this an outstanding debut. Highly recommend to fantasy fans!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

35 thoughts on “This Vicious Grace (The Last Finestra #1) by Emily Thiede #bookreview #YA #fantasy #TuesdayBookBlog”

    1. I think you’ll enjoy the world-building in this one, Diana. Even with the strong world-building, the characters really stood out and were very distinct. I’m such a sucker for found family stories.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.