All of Us Villains (All of Us Villains, 1)

4.5 starsThe Hunger Games with magic!WOW! This book was amazing! Seven families have a tournament to fight for control of high magick. While there is common magick that anyone can use, high magick is special. Hundreds of years ago these seven families decided they wanted the high magick for themselves but couldn’t agree on who should get it. They’re solution, one person from each family fighting to the death and whoever is victorious wins the high magick for their family until the next tournament.I loved that this book included chapters from the characters perspectives. We see the chapters from 4 of the 7 champions, aka the kids competing. I do wish we got to know the other 3 champions more, with their own chapters, rather than just small snippets here and there throughout the book.I also loved that each chapter is started off with quotes from the book “A Tradition of Tragedy”. This tell-all gets their bloody tournament on the map to outsiders of Ilvernath, where the book takes place.I cannot wait for the next book with an ending like that!!I received an advance review copy for free for NetGalley!

When I first read the description of this one - as a sort of darker, fairy tale-esque twist on THE HUNGER GAMES, I knew that I just had to read it! So I was thrilled to get my hands on the audio ARC! I also ended up getting a physical copy of it - while the performance of the female reader is great, the overly dramatic rendition of the male performer quickly became grating. I always listen to books at 2x speed, and because he didn't regulate his own speed or volume, it gave everything an odd emphasis and was really distracting. The sections that he narrated really made me feel like consistently like I was missing something. I really loved the female performer, though - if only she had narrated the whole book! I think I would only get the sequel on audio if there was a different male narrator (or none at all).As for the story itself, I loved it! It follows a curse laid on the town of Ilvernath - where the seven great families are cursed to provide a young champion for a fight to control the town's high magic every 20 years. There can only be one winner and each family maintains their own secrets and traditions for choosing their champions. The book opens just before the next cycle of the curse begins. Four members of different families narrate throughout- Alistair Lowe, the chosen champion of the family who most commonly wins, Gavin Grieve, a young man desperate for his family name to be great once again, Isobel Macasalan, thrust into the spotlight first as this is the first year that the curse fight has publicity rather than secrecy and Briony Thorburn, a confident young woman who feels ready to win at all cost.Like many YA Fantasies, there's some romance here - but also violence, bloodshed, and an ending that leaves the reader quite desperate for the next installment. The world-building gets this off to a bit of a slow start and some of the melodrama of it all does fit with the nature of the over-the-top performance of the male narrator... But as the characters develop and grow, this becomes a much more riveting read. There may be a few predictable turns, but there are definitely some surprises, too!I really enjoyed this! I think this author duo works quite well together and I am really excited for the next book. The characters are well-drawn - and I am not even sure which one I am rooting for in the end to be the last one standing! And I think the magic of the spell-rings and curses feels fresh and fun! I can't wait for more!

All of Us Villains is extremely well-written Hunger Games fanfic. Take the Hunger Games, add magic, and make it between children in seven specific families and you have the premise of this book. A character even comments that someone else almost made him spill his drink on his pants. The story is told from the alternating viewpoints of four characters, three chosen as their family’s champion and one not. I got sucked into the story and then it just ended. There was no resolution whatsoever. It just got to a point and, boom, done. I wasted no time ordering the second book of the duology, but it still annoyed me a bit. I have no problem with series, but I do like for each book to wrap stuff up at least somewhat. This one answered one single question (who wrote A Tradition of Tragedy) and that’s it. Not satisfying at all. Other than that, I loved the book. I recommend this book to people who like magic set in the current day and enjoyed reading The Hunger Games. Just be aware that the two books really should just be one single book and expect to move on to the second book quickly to finish the story.

It felt like Harry Potters Tri-Wizard tournament got thrown into Katniss’s Hungary Games and I’m not sure who I want to win!

I picked up this book because an indie nail polish maker was doing a set of polishes based on the book and I wanted to read it before I saw the polishes. She has always provided good book recommendations in the past. A friend told me they had heard there were some challenges with this book, but I thoroughly enjoyed 90% of it. The most “disruptive” part for me in terms of maintaining my belief in the reality created by the story was at the end. With all of the fractured/not fractured alliances, with all of the decisions each character had to make about their goals, it was hard for me to follow who was doing what, as I would think it would be for them if this were a real situation. I felt that the ending of the book also was light on the writing – it’s almost as if the authors knew that book 2 was coming and just kind of wrote a bit at the end to be like, “Read book 2 for more actual content.” Overall I would recommend this book, and I did convince my friend to put it on their TBR list.

Solo que hay que tener mucho cuidado al tocar el libro porque las huellas se quedan muy marcadas

There is definitely a Hunger Games vibe to this book with the whole “champions having to kill each other in a tournament”, but it's between 7 champions instead of 24 tributes. The selection process is also a little more complex. Instead of being picked at random, the champions are chosen by their families, and you can see that while some of them <i>want and need</i> this opportunity, having been raised with this single goal in mind, others are just forced into the role by their family and would like nothing more than to have an escape that wouldn’t mean abandoning their family and being an outcast.In Ilvernath, there are seven families who have been fighting to control the high magick for centuries. They are all more rotten and despicable than one another, fighting to gain power. Every twenty years or so, during the Blood Moon, each of the seven families sends a champion to compete in a tournament to the death. The victor’s family wins exclusive access to Ilvernath’s high magick supply, until the next tournament.I would have liked to know a little more about world-building. It seems to be a Fantasy setting, yet there are photographs, paparazzi, and use of technology. There is mention of a government, but we don’t know much about the way the country/land is governed. It does not impact the story so far, but they’re little pieces of extra information that would have been interesting to know, and I hope that we will get these details in the next book.Each chapter is told from a different point of view, allowing us to get inside some champions’ heads, and understand a little better the dynamics between the seven families, and their goals too. The chapters follow Alistair, Isobel, Gavin, and Briony and they are different from one another, yet they all share some common traits (including being ruthless, resilient, and willing to kill others);Alistair is wicked and vicious, yet he would do anything for his brother and wants his family to be proud of him and to love him. Isobel is her family’s champion because she is the strongest, but she never wanted to be part of the tournament and is stuck between her loyalty to her family, and her desire to flee. Gavin comes from the weakest family, the one everyone makes fun of, the one that never ever won a tournament, and he is determined to prove to everyone that the Grieves family is worth something (and he does have a ruthless and cold side that surprised me). Finally, there is Briony, born and bred to be a champion, she couldn’t wait to prove to everyone her worth and to be remembered as a strong and mighty champion (and ended up being the one trying to convince everyone to stop fighting...).I find it interesting also that some characters had a history together, before the whole tournament was revealed to the public, and before they were kind of forced to cut ties with kids from the other families. Some were best friends or involved romantically, which will no doubt add a layer of complexity to the plot when will come the time to kill or be killed. The weak romance that was dropped in the second part of the story was not the best though, It felt forced and weak, and while it did add some extra "ouch-you-betrayed-me-even-if-we-kinda-love-each-other" to the story and a little complexity to the champions' feelings, it was not really necessary to the plot and was not very well developed either.

"Sick as he was, he still knew which monsters were the worst. The ones who sat before him."4 starsThis novel was selected as the first read of a new book club. I didn't know what I was getting into with this story. I made it a point not to read the blurb, reviews, or anything about it, so I could begin with zero expectations. For this reason, my initial impression with the first chapter, was that the book was going to be about angsty teens with magic. In that first chapter, Alistair seemed like a typical teenage emo/goth, trying hard to be appear "evil" and "monstrous" - and I rolled my eyes hard.But it's really not like that, and I truly was sucked in - from the second chapter.There are a lot of dark elements to this tale - it's essentially an inherited death-match that seven families compete in every 20 years. Winning allows one of those seven families to control high magick - the strongest and rarest type of magic. To win, most families train their competitors from a young age, and send them into the match armed with curses and spells.Seems pretty brutal.However, there was not nearly as much killing and bloody murder as you might think there would be. Don't get me wrong, there were gory scenes and death, but it wasn't an all-out battle royale.I would categorise the story's protagonists as morally grey, rather than evil or villains. My favourite character was Briony, if only because she seemed to have a challenging story line. She came to terms with herself as a person, reflected on her past actions, acknowledged her own faults and had some character growth. I did enjoy all of the characters though.The story is narrated from the points of view of four protagonists, but manages not to get lost in the switching of POVs. It is character-driven, and I think the author did a great job of portraying the differing personalities of each protagonist. I enjoyed that there was minimal romance, as it didn't feel right to add in a new relationship or love declarations.There are a few shocking moments and twists in this novel, which kept it interesting. And I was surprised a few times, which is always enjoyable when reading. Things really ramp up in the last quarter of the book, with an unexpected ending. Unexpected because the novel was open-ended, leaving us to imagine what may have happened, and leaving room for the second instalment. This open-endedness is not my cup of tea, and is probably what brought my rating down from 5 stars to 4 stars.I do look forward to the next book.

I very much enjoyed this book. Its told from the different perspectives of the Characters as they are forced to battle each other for the control of high magic. Which is highly coveted as it is the only remaining magic left.I loved listening to each character and some of their backstories.I loved the betrayals and loyalties and the magic.

Kind of slow.