Review: A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer

Title: A Vow So Bold and Deadly (Cursebreakers #3)

Author: Brigid Kemmerer

Publisher: Bloomsbury YA

Published: January 26, 2021

Pages: 416

Format: Hardback, my copy

I was really looking forward to the conclusion of this series but I wasn’t sure what to expect. I LOVED book 1 but book 2 let me down and it wasn’t my favorite. I just had a hard time connecting to Lia Mara and it’s still true now.

Just a heads up that this is a very character driven book. I love Harper so much. She’s definitely the one that outshines all the rest. I loved Rhen in the first book and kind of hated him in the second book. I take that back… I hated him. In this book, I wasn’t quite sure what to feel. It was so hard to forget book two and just forgive him easily. I’m still not sure how I feel about him. We do get a bit more of his background and we see a lot more of Lilith. I do understand the depth of that fear that we get in book 1 &2. Is it enough to forgive him? I’m not sure. I was really hoping for an amazing character redemption arc for Rhen and I was disappointed. A lot of the things that happened were just brushed off and I think that’s where it left me conflicted. I do still really love Harper and Rhen together though.

Lira Mara is a character that I completely fell out of love with. I just really think Lira Mara is a very underwhelming character. She can take down her mom in the last book but acts like a timid mouse in this one? I don’t buy it. It’s a complete character change and I hate that she wanted to lean on Grey so much. What happened to badass women don’t need men? Anyways, I found their chapters a bit dull and kept looking ahead to see when I would get back to Harper and Rhen. To be fair, those are the characters I loved in the beginning. I really do think that Grey was probably the wisest out of all of these characters. I love his relationship with Harper. He was put in such a tough situation and I feel like Kemmerer was a bit unfair to him.

I did enjoy my time with this though, for the most part. I flew through this book and finished it in two days. It was a really quick read and flowed really well. I do still love so many of the supporting characters though. Zo was still so badass and I loved her in this book. I feel like she did leave some things open in the end and there might be some plot holes too. It’s bugging me a bit that I didn’t get answers to one thing in particular! There’s a lot of things that didn’t tie up nicely and I’m guessing… spin-off? I’m not sure. There’s a lot of questions left for these characters and I’m confused since this is supposed to be the last book.

Overall, I did really enjoy my time with it. I do like where characters ended up and that things resolved for the most part. My issues were with how some of these characters got there. I devoured it because Kemmerer really knows how to keep you engaged and not wanting to stop reading.

---