I absolutely enjoyed this book tremendously. Kat is a new author to me, and I wanted to see what the story would feel like to me. With Bisexual main characters and a story I couldn’t put down. This book is one I feel will will be reading again and again. Cannot wait for book two!

In all honesty, I should have finished this book way sooner than what I did. But it took way too long.

Every time I'd start I would get chapter in before I got bored and felt the need to stop before I fell asleep. The beginning was boring and dragged. It didn't provide a lot of substance and I couldn't understand why it felt like it was just repeating. As Lilly was learning the history of Castello, it felt like it took too long to explain why it was. There was a lot of time spent on exaggerating it out when it could have been shortened. The real plot didn't kick in until almost 60% into the book. At this point I finally could get past a chapter at a time.

The characters were meh. I honestly found all of them to be unendearing but I think that was the point. No one was really likeable in this town, however it seemed to fit in with the story. Lilly was just oblivious to everything and I felt like everything should have jumped out to her but it didn't.

Overall, the book was decent. The beginning was slow and redundant with the plot not really picking up until about 60% into the book. The characters were nothing remarkable, and almost unlikeable but they fit. I felt like they were meant to be that way which ended up working. I would recommend this book if you like secret cults where a new girl comes in to change everything. Just be mindful it might take a while to actually get there.

Didn’t suck me in or entertain me. I ended up reading it just to get it over with.

It had me in the beginning but then it just started feeling a bit ridiculous. Got lost over which characters were which. The romance was so shallow.

There was so much plot armour which felt lazy.

I’ll probably have forgotten everything that happened in this book by tomorrow.

Nothing wrong with the writing style though - I enjoyed that. It was just the plot and the characterisation that fell short for me

Slightly predictable story which sort of ruined it for me, wasn’t a fan of the characters and it wasn’t a book you could picture in your head as you read as a lot of details seemed missing.

Now that was an interesting tale! A very unique premise with a strong main character. I don't know what to expect next!

This was unfortunately a DNF for me: I was not in the place to read it at the time, I will try to give it another chance in the future.

This was a refreshing fantasy offering that felt different to most books on the market. The vibes were perfect as it was such an atmospheric read. I look forward to reading more from this author.

This was such an interesting read! I found myself so engrossed in the story, the characters had such incredible arcs, and I can't wait to follow this author's journey!

I adored this book! With Fire in Their Blood is the incredible debut from Kat Delacorte. I could not put it down, I ended up staying up until half three to finish it and I have zero regrets. Its one of my favourite books I’ve read in a long time, I can’t wait to read the next one!

A town in the middle of nowhere, family feuds, secrets and magic. What’s not to love? I live for this stuff and as you can probably tell, I was far from disappointed. The chaotic energy from these characters and their relationships with each other is honestly everything, everyone is messed up to some degree and I could not get enough. This really comes out when characters interact with each other, I don’t have a single complaint. I love Lilly’s character development and how her relationships with Liza, Nico and Christian influence her. The setting is eerie, there’s never a moment you don’t feel unsettled and the feeling only increases the more you find out. This is one of those books where the blurb really doesn’t give much away, there’s so much more to it. I’m not complaining about it because I was so down for this chaotic journey full of twists and surprises. I cannot recommend this book enough, seriously, you have to read it!

The novel has a lot of strong points. The characters are well-developed and relatable, and the plot is fast-paced and exciting. The world-building is also impressive, and the author does a great job of creating a believable and immersive fantasy world. However, the novel also has some weaknesses. The writing can be a bit clunky at times, and the plot can be a bit predictable. The novel also has some pacing issues, and the ending is a bit rushed.

With Fire In Their Blood is such a beautifully written YA fantasy. The world-building is outstanding. The story is well written with an enchanting storyline and well-developed characters that engage from start to finish. The world is atmospheric and feels real with vivid descriptions and rich imagery. I cannot get enough. Highly recommended. Be sure to check out With Fire In Their Blood today.

“Trust is an illusion in this city. Our hatreds run too deep.”

With Fire in Their Blood by Kat Delacorte is a modern young adult fantasy set in a medieval Italian town. It’s got magic, very strange relationships, political intrigue, and tons of twists and turns.

The book opens with Lilly, who lives with her father after her mother killed herself a few years before. From the first page, we see Lilly refer to her parents by their first names, Jack and Carly, not mum and dad. It shows the clear distance that has built up between them over the years.

Lilly tells the reader how her relationship with her mother was never a good one and how she felt like her mother didn’t want her. She also says her father was a different man before Carly’s death him hard.
With Fire in Their Blood is narrated in Lilly’s first-person perspective so we see everything through her eyes. There are no other narrators in the book. Despite that, the reader can clearly see Lilly’s misgivings and naivety even if she can’t.

“The more I thought about this city, the more unsettling it became.”

Now Jack is more of a zombie, who decides to take Lilly to a distant off-the-beaten track town in Italy called Castello, claiming a new start.
Now he’s more of a zombie who walks the house. But this zombie–Jack–decides to take Lilly to a distant off-the-beaten track town in Italy called Castello, claiming a new start.
But Castello…Castello is literally a beast of a town. Medieval looking. It catches your breath the moment you lay eyes on it. But then… you discover that it’s not what it seems.

Castello is a town that has been ravaged by warring clans for centuries. Now a man–only referred to as The General—controls the city and has divided the clans, the Marconis and the Paradisos.
Lilly finds herself on the Marconi side, which is like the poor side of the city. Mingling with the Paradisos is forbidden except for one day of the year.

This distinguishing reminded of Utopia, a dark post-apocalyptic Arabic novel by renowned Egyptian author Ahmed Khalid Tawfik. While the book premises and settings are quite different, the idea of poor vs rich in a war-ravaged country (or town) is the common factor.

In Castello, the Saints are evil. Bad people with magical abilities. But reportedly all dead.

When I picked up With Fire in Their Blood, I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I was definitely not prepared for was the political intrigue Kat Delacorte had penned in this book. If there’s anything I loved above all else in this book, it’s the political intrigue.

It’s relatable (no I won’t elaborate) and done really well. It reminded me of the tactics used by the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. While the stories are entirely different, the methodology is the same. (If you haven’t read Animal Farm, then go pick it up now!)

Like many army-led political regimes, we see how The General has ingrained certain beliefs in people’s heads. Slowly, Lilly learns who the Saints were and what they did. How the last war started and how The General came to power.

“The Saints were the children of hell. Born blighted and unnatural with fire in their blood. Stained dark by sorcery and loathsome in the eyes of the light.”

And like any army-backed regime, The General emerged with his Enforcers who ensure that there are no Saints and that no one breaks The General’s law.

Though With Fire in Their Blood wins in imagery, foreshadowing, and political intrigue, it isn’t successful with characterization. I honestly couldn’t like Lilly. I tried but I couldn’t.

While there are many characters in With Fire in Their Blood but there aren’t any likable ones. And that put me off a bit. I didn’t hate Lilly, but I didn’t like her either.

“The girl staring back at me was pale and shadowed, her dark hair a tangling mess. Something feral about her, difficult to tame. I was glad of that, because it hid how brittle I felt on the inside. Like there was another girl, a scared, lost one, locked below my ribcage, threatening to claw her way to the surface if I didn’t watch out.”
What I did like is that Delacorte created a truly broken main character. As a reader, I don’t see that often in books.
But Lilly isn’t the only broken character. Like the town of Castello, everyone is broken – in a way. I think this brokenness – along with Castello’s regime – has made the characters too shallow.
Another thing I disliked about Lilly is how she literally falls for half of the characters in the book! It was annoying.

I realize she’s 16 and discovering herself and sexuality but I felt it was too much. If it breathes, she’ll fall in love with him/her/it. For me it was forced. Kind of like when Netflix wants to force down certain ideas in its movies and series.

Another thing that stood out for me – not in a good way – was that some scenes didn’t seem logical to me. The trial was one of them.

I hadn’t realized it before but on writing this review, I noticed that Kat Delacorte added lots of imagery and foreshadowing in the first two chapters. Foreshadowing always gets extra points from me.

“After the dreams, I’d feel jittery and unsettled all day, my skin hot, my headache building behind my temples. It was as if there was a storm brewing inside me – like my body was rebelling against the town.”

I must say I found the book cover quite pretty and dark at the same time.

Overall, I found With Fire in Their Blood by Kat Delacorte an interesting and fairly fast-paced read with interesting political intrigue and imagery. The characters needed more work but it was a good read.

Overall rating for With Fire in Their Blood by Kat Delacorte: 3.5 stars

Brilliant fantasy in an epically crafted world !! So glad I was able to read this atmospheric tale 😍

“Nobody ever settled for just half a city.”

With Fire in their Blood has a super interesting premise. A modern Romeo and Juliet in a modern Handmaid’s Tale esque society where witches are burned and those that turn them in are celebrated.
The setting is a somewhat creepy Italian town in the middle of nowhere. There’s a wall that literally splits the city based on the two opposing clan sides of the war. It’s a world of faded beauty, crumbling architecture and vandalised artwork. It’s not the Italy where Lily was expecting to live.
There’s a history to the town though, that Lily had to discover. Why they’re split, why the secrecy, why the mandatory tests…
There were some interesting characters with motivations that Lily also had to discover. They make it really difficult for her not to split her loyalties. She’s also having a bit of a bi crisis - poor her!
I was really intrigued by the kind of magic system in this as we don’t really know anything about it. It seems to be a thing that just appears… or so it seems.
The end was really intense, very dramatic. I had thought this might be a stand-alone, but I’m rethinking that with how it ended!

This was a fantastic fantasy which was well plotted and had an amazing setting, the world building was also perfect and I loved the end, I hope there is a sequel!

CW: suicide, arson/burning, violence, religious/cultish theme

I've always been charmed by Europe, even before coming to live here, and the fictional city of Castello just exudes that charm and mystery. It's a city that's not what it seems, filled with secrets and tragedies and people who are more complex (and a tad problematic) than you think. Plus it has clan wars, magic, forbidden things, family drama and a fast-paced story, so I really enjoyed it.

The only parts I didn't like were how irritating Lilly got at times, and how easily she was drawn to a lot of the characters because everyone's apparently hot. But I'm a 30+ married woman; my teenage self would beg to differ, I think 😂

RECOMMENDED LISTENING: "Love Is A Battlefield" by J2 feat. Chelsea Caroline

💬 "That’s what power is: freedom from fear, from pain. From being trapped. From being nothing." 💬

I got this as an arc (thank you @netgalley 🫶🏻) and I did finish it just before it came out, just very late with the review 😅

I really liked the world building and I just really wanted to know more and more, which is making me look forward to picking up the sequel so I can get more answers. I did feel like I guessed quite a bit, but there were still a few things that I didn't predict happening.

I don't think the multiple love interests are for me 🫣 I feel like it went back and forth a lot and it felt quite insta lovey with most of them, except for the one that I was rooting for. I'm excited to see more interactions between the main character and Nico (or just Nico in general cause I actually love him 🥰) in book 2.

The ending! I want the sequel right now after reading that last line!

Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. I did not think I would enjoy this book as it’s different to what I’d usually read but oh god it did not disappoint.

With Fire in Their Blood by Kat Delacorte is the sort of YA that should have been Fabnip. Creepy small town in Italy, witchy goings-on, eternal feud reminiscent of the blood feud in Romeo and Juliet, comps to V.E. Schwab? That sounds amazing. But unfortunately, the execution of the ideas was a huge letdown for me. The story is centred around Lilly, whose father moves them to Castello, a tiny town in Italy that is mostly cut off from modern life, supposedly to help modernise it. But when they get there, Lilly learns that her dead mother may have been involved in something similar to a terrorist attack, and the town has a vendetta against people they refer to as Saints – people with powers. The town is under the influence of a man called the General – and Lilly’s father isn’t there to set up the wifi after all. My biggest gripe with this is that the characters are underdeveloped and there is too much plot pushed into the story – there is no space for relationships to develop and mature, for tension to truly build up. The main character has feelings for multiple other characters, but no chemistry, and I found that it didn’t make sense to me. And there were quite a few plot holes that I couldn’t see past. Unfortunately, this is a miss for me.

“Maybe I'll burn the rest of them. But I'm going to keep you”

𝘽𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬:
The premise of this book had me really intrigued but, unfortunately, there were parts of it that were a bit of a hit and miss for me. It had a slow start but then round about the 150 page mark it started to pick up.
I couldn’t quite connect with any of the characters and I found the insta-love trope with multiple characters quite frustrating.

However, the last 20% of the book was really intriguing and the plot picked up quite significantly, which made me excited for what is to come. I am hopeful that the next book will focus more on the characters themselves now that the world-building was sufficiently covered.

𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙞𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙚𝙣𝙟𝙤𝙮:
🥀 Enemies to lovers trope
🥀 Bisexual Main Character
🥀 Gothic fantasy
🥀 Dark magic
🥀 Family secrets
🥀 Chosen one
🥀 Witches

𝙁𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙌𝙪𝙤𝙩𝙚:
“Our hatred runs too deep. We're all just skeleton keepers here. Carrying the bones of the past, damned by their memory, desperate to overcome.”

𝙍𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you so much to Netgalley & Penguin Random House South Africa for the gifted eARC of this book.