The God of Endings is a dark literary fantasy debut by Jacqueline Holland. It is what I wanted the Invisible Life of Addie La Rue to be.

We follow the lonesome life of a reluctant immortal named Ana. In alternating chapters Holland presents Ana in the present as a teacher in an elite arts school for young children. Ana now going by Collette lives a private quotidian life who finds herself being sucked into the life of one of her students. As she becomes more involved in her student's life, her own existence appears to be unraveling. She believes the God of Endings has been searching for her. Has he finally found her? In the other timeline we follow Ana/Anya starting in the early 1830s through the decades as she searches for meaning in her endless life.

At some point it felt like there was too much going on in the book but Holland does an exemplary job of bringing it all together at the end.

The writing is atmospheric and accessible. It pulls you right in. You will encounter some basic dialogue in French and German along the way.

This was a fantastic debut. Count me in for anything else Jacqueline Holland decides to write.

Thank you to Netgalley and Flatiron books for an advanced reader copy of this book.

The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland is a dark fantasy, beautifully written, and told over two timelines. We follow Anna in 1986, going by the name Collette and running an elite preschool in New York, and Anna in 1830 as a child at the end of her mortal life and then throughout the decades of her life as a vampire. Her life is a brutal one, filled with the many cruelties of the world, and these things are often depicted in crushing detail.

Some character depictions fell a little flat for me as a character-driven reader, and a couple one-off side characters felt a little questionable entirely. There are some lore elements that were mentioned almost offhand and never revisited that left me slightly baffled1. The main issue for me as a reader were certain character decisions which I could not make sense of. I understand a bad decision here and there, but these simply made no sense to me, coming from a centuries-old vampire with some level of experience. Because of the absent reasoning, followed by the brutality of the outcome, it felt too much like the author’s hand coming through the story to insert shock-value and horror artificially2.

Aside from those few parts this was a compelling story full of emotion and atmosphere and a rather enjoyable read. I found myself engaged by the writing despite having little inkling of where things were headed at any point. The 480 pages read surprisingly quickly, and the ending was fitting for the story told. Anna, never having wanted to become a vampire and immortal, struggles with her immortality, with the pain of getting attached to mortal places and people, but also her deeply ingrained humanity and desire for a home and community. She is naturally kind and caring, and wants desperately to protect herself from the loss that comes with caring for things more fleeting than herself.

Overall this book is a slow, often sad, tale of a vampire who never wanted to live forever and does not know what to do with immortality. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoy dark fantasy, who are not turned away by grisly scenes of tragedy, and enjoy a fairly slow pace with atmospheric writing. Fans of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue may enjoy this one, or if your favorite character from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles was Louis.

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!!

This book is a deep and dark look into an eternal life unwanted and perhaps misused at times. This is akin to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue in the sense that it's a slow-moving story but constantly hard-hitting.

Anna is only a child when her father passes away and she is "rescued " by her sort of grandfather. Her grandfather gifts her with eternal life as a vampire, but for Anna,this gift is a curse.

The story goes between the present and the past. Reading about Anna's past over a hundred years ago and who she is now, in a different time and place, was really thought-provoking. The mistakes made and then to see how those things stayed with her until the dramatic end. (By the way, I loved the ending)

Highly recommend this!

Out March 7, 2023!

Thank you NetGallery and Ms.Holland for the opportunity to review "The God of Endings." I was not sure what to expect from this book basing my decision to read it off of description alone,, but I am glad I did. This book reminded me of "The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue," but better. Ms. Holland's story telling flows poetically. Her descriptions are hauntingly beautiful and her story line is intriguing. The reader is drawn into a story full of mystery,sorrow and love. I highly recommend it.

First off I want to thank profusely the intern that emailed this widget to me. What hit my attention besides the mention of vampires was the comparison to Anne Rice books. I have yet to come anywhere close to anything like the worlds Anne Rice creates. This book is ambitious and a long book but my is it a great read.

The FMC is equivalent to brad pitts character In interview with a vampire in where she never asked to be cursed and feels to deeply for humans. The book jumps timelines each chapter. One is where we learn of her long live and one of her present circumstances. The storytelling is slow, thoughtful, poetic at times and seeped in melancholy.

There are things I wish I could have known like what became of some of the characters. The present storyline was a bit drab. The only developed character was Leo. Everyone else was just added space.

I wouldn’t mind a book 2. Life on Europe. And more backstory on other vampires.

When I first saw an ad for this book on Facebook, it immediately engaged my interest, and I was thrilled to see the ARC on offer, and be approved for it as well.

In this book, we meet Anya/Anna/Collette, a young woman who is made into a vampire in the mid 1800s by her "grandfather" after nearly dying from tuberculosis. This book is primarily a presentation of two timelines, 1984 as Collette runs a small French immersion preschool, and her early life in the 1800s as a young vampire, learning who she is and dealing with the consequences of being so different. As she moves through time, she meets various people, some impacting her life in bigger way than others, all while trying to hide her true nature from those she cares for.

The 1984 timeline shows her having a crisis of mind and body, all while cozily running an adorable preschool and interacting with young children on a daily basis. Her past storylines show how tragedy seems to dog her from place to place, leading her to decide to give up emotional attachments to others, but in 1984 one particular student and his troubled family life seems to tug at her.

From the beginning, this book felt like a strong and new take on the vampire myth. I enjoyed learning about her early life and her character development was well written and enthralling. The climax of the book, however, was not what I was expecting, and honestly left me feeling disappointed. It did not live up to the potential of the book, in my opinion. I will say that all in all, I did enjoy the book, but feel mildly dissatisfied.

Thank you to Flatiron Books and NetGalley for the electronic ARC for review.

Honestly, I have no words for how good this is. This is not the type of vampire book that will info-dump and hold your hand through the myth or lore or canon. It's not the sort of vampire book that brings some scene like New Orleans into a vivid tableau. It's poignant and steeped in realism, more in line with folk histories of vampirism than anything else. But my god, it has a plot, a story, a POINT. The ending is just - ugh. Beautiful. 10/10 would read again.

After seeing this advertised all over my Instagram with comparisons of it to The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, I quickly added this to the top of my reading list and audibly gasped upon seeing my approval for an ARC. A book about a sad vampire questioning the purpose of life as she weaves throughout time? Sign me up!

Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations, so here's what I did and didn't like about this book:

Pro #1: It brings in a more historical perspective of someone living throughout centuries. One of my singular qualms about Addie is how we, as readers, don't get to see more of history unfold. Sure, she has her meetings with famous writers in France and there are some inklings about society in different time periods, but it's absolutely minimal. It works for V.E. Schwab.

In The God of Endings, on the other hand, there is equal focus on historical backdrops as there is on the main character, which I loved. It interweaves themes of colonialism and xenophobia, pertinent histories of the countries she lives in and how that effects her, and so on. This was probably my favorite part about this book was interweaving historical fiction in with fantasy.

Con #1: The author used elementary forms of different languages to her detriment. I love books that are able to interweave other languages seamlessly into the plots/themes of their books and still have it make sense even to readers who have never studied the language. Holland isn't able to do that.

The majority of the dialogue she writes is in other languages. The writing is elementary and it doesn't fit in with the story well. I got by with the French pretty easily (thanks to 5 years of learning the language that is quickly disappearing), but really struggled with the German. I was skimming large portions of the dialogue because it felt unimportant and went untranslated, and I feel like having it there doesn't really benefit anyone.

Pro #2: Collette is a deeply interesting main character. I will give props to Jacqueline Holland for being able to write such a fascinating and well-fleshed out character. This was a largely character-based story, and I felt engaged with Collette the entire time. Portions of Collette's character-building consequently meant that other characters went under-developed, but I loved reading from Collette's perspective.

Con #2: There were large portions of the plot that did not fit in well with the course of the story. Since Collette's life spans centuries, there's a lot of different stories to be told, but some of them just lacked the luster that other stories told. Whenever the author tried to interweave mythology (as she did about half-way through the book) I felt myself being drawn out of the book, and appreciated the bits on humanity a lot more.

In summary, I am so grateful and glad I read this, but I'm near-positive I'll never be picking it up again.

If Anne Rice and Ottessa Moshfegh collaborated, it would be this debut. This split timeline is the perfect way to this vampire memoir/fiction story. At times I struggled with “how is this connected,” or “where is this going?” But overall, the writing was so poetic that it keeps you entranced.

The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland is a gorgeous slow-burn look at living and the loneliness of it being too long. Chapters alternate between historical flashbacks starting at the 1800s and the current timeline where Anya is turned to a vampire, she takes the name Anna and then no name at all as it seems the God of Endings keeps taking and taking those around her once she is named. In the present she is called Colette, teaching schoolchildren and finding herself becoming wrapped up in a volatile home life situation of one of her students. This is a book about life and death, love and family, parenthood and negligence, art and immortality, and it is a book about endings.

This work is ambitious. I can hardly adequately summarize the plot because it tries to encapsulate so many themes and events. Colette has lived centuries and the pacing of the book sits with the quiet moments of life and the way art breathes purpose back into griefs that can't be put to words. I like how grounded vampirism was, it felt a lot less sensationalized than a lot of other media and took a very lonely and contemplative perspective.

I appreciated how quiet and character-focused this book was, but did find myself struggling a bit to really connect with our lead. A lot of the characters though are well-woven, complex and flawed, but there also felt a lack of consequences with our protagonist and follow through on certain plot aspects that it made getting attached a bit difficult.

There were just really interesting and thoughtful concepts - I really loved some quotes and motifs paraphrased below along the lines of:
+ Love, real love, cannot be stopped. It is one of those things that has no ends
+ No one has compassion for a bad mother -- (( which I just think criticism of the 'bad mother' archetype and how we place mothers societally on a pedestal is interesting. I do have my thoughts on how this book handled it however intentionally but I won't dive into that here ))

I ultimately think the ending though, will be the most divisive aspect.

It has been a few days since I finished this book and I am still thinking about it! While this is technically a book about a vampire, it doesn't feel like it. It is really about an immortal women who is burdened by her immortality. A woman who struggles with the meaning of life and if any part of it is worthwhile. The exploration of Anna/Anya/Collette and the events of her long life are dark and tragic, yet also filled with love and beauty. The vampire lore of this novel is based in Slavic roots and includes the titular God of Endings, Czernobog. I really loved how the storyline with Czernobog and his continued influence in Anna/Anya/Collette's culminated in the realization that when one door in life closes, another one opens.
I found this to be such an interesting novel. It is part dark literary dark fantasy, part thriller. I really enjoyed the beautiful and lyrical writing and the blend of past and present that felt real. I loved reading about Anna/Anya/Collette's journey in loneliness, love, loss, and life.

I was intrigued by this book as soon as I read its description. Then I heard that it is reminiscent of Interview with a Vampire and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and I got excited to read it. It did not disappoint me in the slightest. Jacqueline Holland's writing in this book was wonderful. She creates such an atmospheric world that has a feeling of horror, heartbreak, and mystery. The God of Endings is a vampire story at its heart, and I fell in love with it from the beginning. It questions the point of having an immortal life and what a person can do with it.

I enjoyed that we switched back and forth between Collette's (Anna's) past and her present day. It was great to learn so much about her life after she got turned. Those scenes help the reader learn even more about her as a character. Though, there were a couple of times that I wished we had stayed in the present-day scenes because of what was happening.

My favorite part of the story was the scenes from Collette's present day as a preschool teacher. Many of those scenes were heartbreaking, especially with Leo. As someone who has worked with children for over a decade, I connected a lot with what she was going through in those scenes. It was unexpected and undeniably both heartbreaking and beautiful. I could not help tearing up multiple times throughout the book, especially in the last chapter. This book touched my heart. I highly recommend it.

*Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC. I had such an incredible time reading this book.*

Jacqueline Holland’s novel “The God of Endings” is a haunting debut with vampires, Slavic mythology, and an “am I going crazy” plot line for the ages.

Collette LeSange may appear as the youthful headmistress––albeit lonely artist––of a private art school in New York, but she is anything but. In reality, Collette is centuries old. Anna (AKA Collette) is originally from 1830s upstate New York, where her father carves tombstones for a living. Despite local folklore of the dead being brought back to life, Anna is enamored with her father’s work. But after she and her family succumb to a horrific illness, Anna is unwillingly brought back to life by her step-grandfather, who turns her into a young vampire.

Several centuries later, in 1984, Anna––also known as Collette--—runs a private arts preschool in upstate New York. Although reluctant to make connections, Anna’s life becomes entangled with the family of one of her students after becoming concerned for his safety and health. All the while, Anna struggles to juggle a presence from her past and her growing hunger.

Jumping back and forth between Anna’s past and present, Holland masterfully captures the atmosphere of 1800s Eastern Europe, where Anna is sent to build a new life after she transitions into immortality, as well as rural France in World War II, where she becomes a teacher. As the novel follows Anna’s life throughout the centuries, Holland shapes her into a nuanced woman running from her past. Despite there being no romance plot in “The God of Endings,” you’ll find yourself falling in love with Anna’s hopeful attitude and quiet strength throughout the novel.

Much of the novel traces Anna’s footsteps and figures out the present-day issues. Still, Holland sprinkles in just the right amount of existential crises to satiate any reader. With themes of grief, loss, and fighting against your fears, Holland doesn’t hold back on the emotions and horrors of life.

My tiniest gripe was that I wish there were more emphasis on the Slavic folklore woven into the novel, especially when Anna was living in Eastern Europe. Although Czernobog plays a significant role in Anna’s fears throughout her life, incorporating more folklore into the narrative could’ve added more dimension to Anna’s past.
A darker version of V.E. Schwab’s “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” but still in a league of its own, “The God of Endings” is a stunning debut from an author I hope to see more from.

Flatiron Books and Netgalley provided this copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc!

Let me start by saying that the writing for this debut is absolutely stunning. It is lyrical and heart wrenching. This is a very unique take on vampires, while evoking the vibes of Interview with the Vampire mixed with the Invisible Life of Addie Larue.

The dual timelines did become a bit disjointed at times and I wish they came together a bit more seamlessly. But overall it was very intriguing and that final chapter was awesome.

Very lyrical prose in this meditation on what makes life worth living. Not to every reader's taste, but those who prefer their vampire stories with an air of literary fiction will find a lot to love here. Very ambitious and thought-provoking. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher!

This book was hard for me to rate. I can appreciate the excellent and atmospheric writing style. I think the plot was an interesting concept. I just don't prefer this style of book. It was dark and depressing and just not an enjoyable read for me. I know many people who would absolutely love this book and I will be recommending it to them.

Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

I unfortunately had to DNF at 5%. I could not get into the style of writing. I’m unsure if it is due to a book hangover from my previous read or just that I didn’t vibe with the cadence of this prose.

The reason I quit at 5% was very petty too…I feel bad but there was a rather elementary mistake in the French and the MC is supposed to speak French? I apologize for the pettiness but I decided in that moment to stop.

If you enjoyed this book so judgment at all!! It has many rave reviews so please try it for yourself.

I am not above revisiting at a future time!

This was a beautiful blend of V.E. Schwab's Addie LaRue & an Anne Rice style book, but the author makes their own mark with this lovely novel that explores whether life is worthwhile or not. Like Addie, it did drag a bit for me at certain parts.
Jacqueline has a very lyrical and poetic style. I enjoyed the back and forth between timelines and the way everything comes together at the end, as the book's title promises. The characters were enjoyable even though the loneliness of the MC was palpable and made you feel sad and lonely too. The cover is really different & beautiful and I think many will be drawn to this book like me with equal enjoyment.
Thank you for the opportunity to read this Arc. I look forward to more from this author.

This was a very well written and developed story. I struggled a bit at times because it was so depressing. The vampire/fantasy aspects really drew me into the book. Well done

A deeply unique take on the traditional vampire novel that feels like a more mature, literally version of the Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Outside of the supernatural element, it is a touching tale about a lonely woman that spans generations and many significant world events. I especially loved the unexpected medications on motherhood and grief, Despite the main character being a vampire, I hesitate to even categorize this as fantasy, viewing it largely as an astonishing work of historical literature. I will say there are several graphically violent scenes of death and gore that may be upsetting to some readers, so proceed with caution and the knowledge that this does contain blood-sucking immortals and the resulting implications of that.