First, I’d like to thank Netgalley for my ARC of this! Second, my review, very well crafted, but I don’t think I was the perfect audience for this. I requested this through netgalley because it was under the horror genre, but it is clearly dark fantasy/dark academia everywhere else. Unfortunately, I personally am not the biggest fan of that genre. That said, this book sparks very interesting ideas on immortality that I’ve yet to see explored in fiction, and I give the author all the credit for this incredible work of world-building. The characters were very well written in their own lore, and I believe this would be perfect for fans of character driven dark fantasy.

It's been a while since I finished a book with a diverse set of characters that felt unique and complex. The plot of this book was hard to follow at times, due to the chapter formats (diary entries and investigation files), however, the worldbuilding, the characters and the action make up for it. The ending of the book felt like perhaps there will be a sequel, and I honestly hope there will be.
The characters keep secrets and are connected in one way or another, and it is all you can think about then the bodies begin to drop.

A thrilling and gripping read, perfect for a weekend!
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

*3.5 rounded up to 4*

I will admit that this took me a while to get going. I put this down several times because I felt to stupid to continue reading it. The writing style is way more fancy than I am, like I knew the words on the page but didn't understand what the whole sentence was telling me. I had to reread several times and then it was a little confusing knowing what character's POV you were in so I then had to reread again to get that part. So with all the rereading, the first part of the book I have managed to memorize and could probably tell you the whole thing by heart. BUT once this got going, I was on board. I started to understand the characters, the magical structure and everything started to come together. I loved the premise and the little slice of mystery surrounding the narrative. And that cover art is still my favorite!

Thanks to NetGalley and Little Blackbird LLC for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Although literary urban fantasy isn't my favourite, I have to say that I still enjoyed reading M.L. Blackbird's A Wish Too Dark And Kind. There were multiple narratives in the story and often a large amount of descriptiveness, but I found I was invested in the characters' stories as things progressed. In the novel, a dinner party is hosted by the immortal prince, Arnaud Demeure who can fulfil wishes or conjure nightmares. There are eight guests each one hiding dark secrets and intentions. Overall, I was left a little confused but I'm still pleased to have picked this one up.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel from Little Blackbird LLC via NetGalley at my own request. This review is my own unbiased opinion.

If China Mieville collaborated with Justin Cronin to re-invent the urban fantasy genre from scratch, it might read something like this.

When I read the blurb, I initially expected something like a mystery-plot in the style of Agatha Christie, but with vampires (maybe?); while the cover, to me, says YA horror. Neither could be further from the truth, and I'd say the plot as well as the expectations aroused by the cover are perhaps a bit misleading. That's a shame, because this is an amazing book, but probably not what the YA paranormal/vampire mystery crowd might be looking for, and some readers who would very much enjoy this might not think to pick it up. We all judge our books by the covers, after all.

Paranormal, or urban fantasy, is often a pretty low-brow genre and focused mainly on a love story-aspect (let's call it what it is, porn with werewolves). And that's is a big damn shame, because this genre has the potential for so much more.
The labyrinthine horror-plot Blackbird weaves in a dry and detached style that couldn't be further removed from the purple prose often encountered in this genre made this a real joy to read.
I'll say that it's not an easy or fast read, however - you have to be on your toes to follow the interweaving plotlines and time strands, and the prose requires you to sit up and pay attention as well. Initially, it was a little confusing, but the longer you read, the more everything begins coming together.

If you are looking for a genre-bending literary urban fantasy, I would absolutely recommend giving this one a go! Perfect for fans of House of Leaves and China Mieville, as well as people who prefer their supernatural creatures on the horror side of things.

I want to thank NetGalley and M.L. Blackbird for a free copy of this book in exchange for a honest review. All opinions here expressed are my own.

This is an honest review in exchange for an ARC.
The premise of this book really appealed to me and like others really enjoyed the opening chapters featuring Alex's POV. I had to give up on this book as I really found it a struggle to read. Alex is definitely the stand out character and really enjoyed her chapters. I generally like books that are told through multiple POV but found this a bit clunky which impacted on the pacing of the story. The magical concepts in this are fantastic but over all it just wasn't for me

This book was really interesting and so fun to read. First it was little bit confusing for me maybe because this genre is little out of my comfort zone but at the end it made all sense. I really love the characters and reading about their background stories. It was truly interesting. The book was written in a such an interesting way . I loved that. The story is full of mystery and magical. I really loved it and highly recommend it to anyone

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced
2.5

I have a lot of mixed feelings.

I was really excited to read this book ans there were a lot of things I really liked about it. The premise was so unique and there were aspects of the magic system that I liked. The writing was dynamic and I would totally read stories but this author in the future.

However, like others have said, this story was very confusing. The perspectives and plot were sometimes difficult to follow and I’m still not 100 percent sure I knew everything that happened. The writing, while nice, was sometimes confusing. Certain elements of the plot seemed like they needed fleshed out more. The whole “wolf” thing was a bit odd and again I felt like the immortal thing needed more explanation.

With all that being said, I still enjoyed it, but there were so many elements I had trouble with. I’d recommend this book for someone interested in a standalone novel that is gruesome, mysterious, and unique.

dnf on page 112

trigger warning
<spoiler> mention of slavery, grief </spoiler>

People are invited to a party. Not any people, mind, every single one of them is immortal, some of them even possessing the ability to do magick. Another thing the guest have in common is that they are not sure about the purpose of this party.

The first 20 pages rocked, then I quit because it was the middle of the night and I needed to sleep. Next day, it felt like I had an entirely different book before me.
The writing and especially the timeline feel very messy. Other reviewers say it makes sense and the end, but at the point I quit, it didn't. On one hand, I do not like being kept in the dark and not knowing anything about what's happening, on the other hand, I recently read Harrow the Ninth which is exactly like that, the not knowing, the guessing, getting new data, guessing again. I loved Harrow the Ninth, but the reading experience was entirely different to what we have here.

You see, it feels like following a writing newbie who has all these fun ideas but hasn't learned yet to tie them together. It feels like said ideas are the best of the book, and the characters are flat and will be forever. There is no much a mystery as the sense of mystery, which makes me care not at all about what will go down, because the author doesn't seem fully convinced, either.

I had problems keeping the characters apart. Only one felt clearly characterised, and that's Alex, who just is against everything and anyone and is used so the author themselves doesn't have to infodump via narrator, because Alex really loves patronising by explaining.
In fact, the scene I quit at was her explaining the system of magic randomly in the middle of the book.

There were oddly phrased sentences and I even found a grammatical error nobody edited out, but forgot to mark the page on my e-reader so I can't find an report it. Oh well.

Not my cup of tea, though the premise seemed so fun.
It's marketed as being like Knives Out, and please, ignore that. It really isn't a cozy crime novel with fantasy elements, it's more... look we're cool immortals, admire us. I'd more recommend it to Anne Rice fans, but then I would not recommend it at all because I didn't get along with it in any way.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

A Wish Too Dark and Kind by M.L. Blackbird left me with many feelings: excitement, despair, love and hate.

The blurb sounded very promising and I tell you, I was ready to dive in. But this wasn't easily done. The characters are interesting enough, the magic system and the story idea great - but the non-linear structure and the perspective hopping from one to another left me confused for a good third of the book.

Characters are introduced rapidly with their own stories after the very apocalyptic opening. At first they felt flat to me and it was only much later that everything made sense. The author's writing style kept me going, otherwise I would have DNfd this book very soon.

It got better after that and I liked this little dark story very much in the end. This book is not the right one for you if you dislike death, blood magic and violence.

3 1/2 stars overall.

A Wish Too Dark and Kind by M.L. Blackbird is an eerie, eccentric, and captivating murder mystery.

The story centers around an enigmatic man who invites 8 immortals to solve an elaborate puzzle at his party. However, somewhere along the way, a ritual sacrifice unfolds, and we as the reader are looking through investigative documents to find out how that crime took place.

I have to say, this book was a mixed bag for me. There are some engrossing, awe-inducing passages and I adored the alchemy-based magic system.

However, I find the structure and organization (or lack thereof) of this book to be extremely confusing. There are abrupt scene breaks, and the story jumps from disjointed documents back to the ongoing third-person narrative sometimes multiple times mid-chapter, which felt incredibly disruptive and jarring to the flow of the story for me.

All in all, A Wish Too Dark and Kind is an imaginative but convoluted tale.

Thank you Netgalley for this Arc!

A Wish too Dark and Kind is such a creative and intriguing tale. The beginning of the book was slightly confusing but it all came together beautifully.

I fully enjoyed this story which was full of magic and mystery. I definitely recommend this as a quick fantasy read!

What a read!!! I was kindly gifted an early e-copy in return of an honest review. I loved this! The cover immediately caught my attention & I couldn’t put it down! I would certainly recommend.

I tried, I really did try, but this was such hard going. If I were less bloody minded, I would have given up at the quarter-way mark but no, I had to continue – something I really began to regret at about halfway. It’s just too much – too many characters, too many points of view, too many timelines and all put together too haphazardly. There is a brief period in the latter half where the story comes together enough to become comprehensible (hence bumping the rating up to two stars), but it fades before the end. I’m left feeling unsure of what I’ve just read, and resentful of the waste of time that could have been spent on something more comprehensible and enjoyable.

I received an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I want to thank NetGalley for my advance readers copy of A Wish Too Dark And Kind. This was such a fun read, fast paced, filled with a lot of mystery, magic. I enjoyed the way it was narrated allowing me to guess and theorized about each character as the story unfolded and pieces came together. 4/5 stars. I will be posting a blog review closer to Pub Day!

This one wasn’t for me, I’m afraid. I liked the idea of it. But there were so many characters and they weren’t well drawn enough, so it was hard to keep everything straight. All the jumping around made it hard to follow, and it felt really really long and in need of a good edit. The writing was clunky too, almost as if it had been translated into English. The magical theory was interesting. And I liked Alex. But other than that I wasn’t keen. It felt like lots of things went unexplained. Not my favorite.

A Wish Too Dark and Kind takes place at a dinner party hosted by the immortal "prince of Paris" Arnaud Demeure. The book switches back and forth from revealing Demeure's convoluted backstory and motivation to following his (also immortal) dinner party guests as they try and figure out the dark purpose Demeure truly has for summoning them.

I wasn't too sure about the premise of this book but after the first 50 or so pages I started to really get into it. As other reviewers have mentioned I was really interested in Alex's character and was looking forward to getting invested in other characters but they never seemed to really be fleshed out the same way. There is a lot of really good and interesting stuff here- Alex as I mentioned and also Demeure's "sister" Valentine, a cool magic system and world-building that incorporates mythology and biblical themes, and lots of mystery and complicated family dynamics. Unfortunately the pieces don't really come together and it ends up feeling like the author is trying to do too much in one short book. I liked some of the characterization and the writing so even though I might not recommend this book I would be interested to read other by Blackbird.

I felt this book was for me as soon as I read the blurb. It almost sounded like a murder mystery but, given the eight guests are all immortal, no actual murder.

I was quite gripped early on with my brain absorbing as much as possible, expecting the smallest details to become more important as we reached the crescendo. One of the first characters we meet, Alex, starts off as a teacher in a school for magic when an accident occurs which leaves a deadly creature murdering students. You would be forgiven for feeling like this is going to be an interesting tale but within a handful of pages I still over and she is sent out to party at the demand of the headmaster. It does however build a great first look at this brilliant character so I was exited to see the other party members being fleshed out. Spoiler: they weren’t.

With a premise like this the focus should always be on the characters. The mystery should unfold as you learn more and more about their past, their personalities, and their motives. In this book however I was left feeling a bit short changed. A lot of the characters histories was left unanswered or poorly explained. Timeline jumps are a common occurrence in this story which does help add more details to the relationships between the characters but only the thinnest slivers of information. It felt very much like “Oh by the way ‘x’ sired ‘y’ a century ago. Anyway back to the story...”

This said it wasn’t all bad and as a whole I did enjoy this book. The laws of physics, science and magic are explained beautifully and gave a wonderful depth to the world. And I loved the glimpses into the past more than the main story, although even those left a lot of blanks and unanswered questions.

I wouldn’t really recommend this book personally but I did like a lot of elements. My wish? That this character driven story had a bit more depth to those characters and that we weren’t left quite so in the dark.

Actual rating more like 2.5 stars.

This was a hard book to rate for me, because I kind of enjoyed this story in spite of its quality. In other words, I had a lot of fun reading it, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to a friend.

A Wish Too Dark And Kind was carried by its characters. There were a lot to juggle for the overall length of the story, but they were all so colorful that it almost didn't matter. This book is swimming with villains and morally gray individuals, and it was a blast seeing how they all weaved together despite being so unique, and to try and determine who to root for. Part of what made them so great was the character descriptions: they were vivid and unique really brought all of the oddballs to life.

In general, though, I had mixed feelings about the prose. The character and setting descriptions were most well done, sometimes even great but at some points it went a little too far. It was well balanced at times, but other times felt like the narrative was taking itself too seriously. This also resulted in a bit of mixed messaging from the worldbuilding. It was deep and interesting enough to keep me reading, but at times felt like it was dark just for the sake of being dark. Then at some points that I found funny, I wasn't sure that it was actually meant to be comedic.

What really keeps me from recommending this book however was the dialogue and pacing. For how detailed and elaborate this world and story was, it felt very rushed at times. Since the characters were so interesting, I would've liked more opportunities to get to know them, rather than just being so focused on moving the plot forward. The dialogue also tripped me up a bit: it was stilted at times (not horribly - this is just something that really impacts the quality of a story for me. I want characters to talk like regular people!) and a little inconsistent. (Characters who were supposed to be immortal/centuries years old speaking too casually. I wanna see more old timey-slang from characters that are supposed to be old-timey!)

My overall impression of this book is that I am very interested in reading future works by Blackbird. A lot of the bones are there - the ideas and the characters - and with some more writing experience I think there will be some good books from him in the future.