Maria Vale's The Legend of All Wolves series is undoubtedly one of the most refreshing and distinctive series about shifters out there. So, when I heard about her new book, Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death, I was ecstatic. But let me tell you, it is not your run-of-the-mill paranormal love story. This book is so much more than that. It delves deep into the meaning of life itself and leaves the reader with profound thoughts to ponder.

Kudos to Vale for taking a new direction in her writing. Death, the main character, is a fascinating and unique character that completely broke the mold. Unlike the typical broody and alluring grim reaper character in paranormal romances, Death in this book is truly one of a kind.

Admittedly, at the beginning of the book, I struggled with the complex English vocabulary, which was above my level. It took some time for me to fully grasp what was happening and relate to the characters. They weren't particularly likable at first, but as the story progressed, I found myself rooting for Molly and Death.

Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death is an unpredictable and humorous book that kept me on my toes. I had absolutely no idea what would happen next. Although the book had its challenges, I enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone looking for a thought-provoking and unique read.

2.7 Stars
One Liner: A commendable attempt

Azrael, aka The Death Agent, Grim Reaper, et al., has made a mistake. He was supposed to take Molly Molloy’s soul but ended up saving her from death due to chicken wings. Of course, the boss up there isn’t pleased and ordered him to set things right.
Molly may have had a hard life, but she isn’t going to let a bumbling Agent of Death take her life. Now that she can see and talk to him, she is determined to stay alive for as long as possible.
Interacting with Molly makes Azrael question a lot of assumptions… and he is falling in love with a human! But how will it end for them?
The story comes in the third person POV of the two main characters (with an occasional insight by another character).

What I Like:
The premise is intriguing, and so is the cover. In fact, I requested the book for the cover. So good!
Death, aka Azreal, is quite a delightful character. Not someone confident and rude but more like an enthusiastic young kid who needs constant supervision. This is rather fun to read, even if it gets exasperating in the second half.
Molly is a strong-willed character with a tragic past. She still retains her cheerfulness and loves bossing around Dee (Death). There are a few things I didn’t like about her, though these make her more ‘real’, I suppose.
The first 40% of the book is cool. Yeah, the writing is a bit different (complex). Still, it has some laughs and weird stuff going on. Entertaining too.
The setting isn’t explained, but that shouldn’t be a problem if you go with the flow. Sometimes, it’s easier to not wait for explanations and let the story go where it wants to. Yet…
The book sure has some introspective points about life, choices, changes, etc. However… (more in the next section).

What Could Have Been Better for Me:
Though a majority of the story is set in NYC, the setting up there and the role of other people (so many have names, but only a couple of them are recurring characters) isn’t fully explored. As someone who likes world-building, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed by the lack of details.
The last 30% of the book is boring. It takes the story forward at 8x speed to cover a huge timeline. However, I couldn’t stay invested in the plot and stop bothering. I just wanted the book to end.
The climax should have been powerful. It is set up to be. Though, for me, it ended up confusing. I read it twice to understand what happens. Somehow, the impact isn’t there.
In a way, the book should have been a novella. I didn’t like the preggs trope and the subsequent track. That’s where my interest started to dip. Since the concept isn’t explained much, this would have been more entertaining as a novella.
I like dark humor. I enjoy it in most books. Here too, I like it in some places. Yet, some of it (again in the second half) gets stressful. I sure don’t want to laugh when a woman literally has to run the household because her partner is not suited for pretty much anything. The said guy being ‘Dee’ doesn’t change things. Not really.

To summarize, Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death has an entertaining first half and a heavier second half with some weird stuff and dark humor thrown in. It has a bit of steam.
Thank you, NetGalley and Wild and Ashe, LLC, for the eARC. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death just wasn’t for me. I guess I was looking for a light hearted love story with a unique theme. I liked the idea of death falling in love, however, I personally just found the theme of mortality too heavy, made even more depressing by the quirkiness. Furthermore, I agree with other reviewers that I seen on other websites that the language was somewhat odd and terminology confusing, seemingly without explanation.

So... How to talk about this one. As Vale is quick to state, it's not a romance. It is a love story, though.

Death/Azrael/Neshama'le/Dee isn't exactly the Grim Reaper as you imagine him. Sure, he travels the world and collects souls from every dying person, but he wears thrift store t-shirts and a duster with tons of little pockets sewn into it to keep each soul safe. One day, he takes the wrong soul - and this puts him on a path that will change basically everything.

The important thing to know about this book is that the writing is extremely evocative - but of the normal, slightly disgusting parts of life we all experience but try not to think about. What, exactly, do we mean? Like the feeling of your legs sticking to a fake leather couch. Like the smell of fried food that gets stuck in your hair after you spend the day working at a greasy spoon. And the point (we think) is that these are all a part of life - things that Dee doesn't get to experience until he meets Molly.

If a book with slightly disgusting imagery, not a small helping of tragedy, plus a lot of gallows humor, this might be right up your alley.

This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novel.

Thank you Netgalley and Wild & Ashe, LLC for allowing me to read this book.

Summary: Death attempts to take a soul from Molly Molloy whose time is up. However, because of distracting circumstances, he takes Molly Molloy's grandmother instead. The head angels, Custodes, are upset with Death. They want him to fix his mistake. Death finds Molly again and at first Molly fights back; more and more times Death comes back and tries to take her soul, but eventually falls for Molly. He tries to find ways to save her from her ultimate fate.

This book gave me a Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, A. Lee Martinez feel. I enjoyed the quirkiness and humor throughout the story.

What didn't work for me was the writing. It was hard to get through. A 200 paged book should be something I fly through, yet it became a struggle after a while. I felt that the timeline went all over the place, weird words and lines were used, some side stories seemed irrelevant, and ultimately it "jumped the shark" for me when Molly became pregnant. Just too bizarre and honestly a runaway train of a story.

I so wanted to like this book based on the blurb and cover, but unfortunately like a lot of other reviewers, the writing style just didn't do it for me. I DNF'd at 10%.

I voluntarily read an advanced copy of Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death by Maria Vale. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC.

This book was rough to read. Great concept but the character development needed work. Also wasn't a fan of the writing style.

(I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review).⁣

This book started out interesting and had my attention right away. Then it took a weird turn and lost me and I dnf. I tried to finish but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The concept behind Death was interesting and he was comical which I liked. But then it took a strange turn and scene with awkward descriptions and a scene with him and a catalog. Then the history the author tried to give was too much, at least for me, and was confusing and I didn’t really understand. At the point it lost me and I didn’t want to finish.

Definitely a more difficult read than usual. But overall, I found it a great comprehension exercise. This would put off most people as it takes a higher level of patience.

Thank you to NetGalley, Wild & Ashe, LLC, and Maria Vale for providing an eARC for a honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for providing an e-ARC in exchange of an honest review

unfortunately I DNFed

I was excited for the concept of the story I expected something similar to the show lucifer which I LOVED
but I was having a hard time with the writing style and keeping up with the story, death as a character started out comedic which I liked but then there were weird moment that I hated.

MOLLY MOLLOY AND THE ANGEL OF DEATH by Maria Vale⁣
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(I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review).⁣
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Death is an ageless, immortal being who for twenty thousand years has collected the souls of dying humans. Until, one day, a mix up results in him saving Molly Molloy—a waitress with dreams of becoming a paramedic—from choking on a chicken wing. ⁣
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If you’ve ever read Mort by Terry Pratchett, this is what Mort would be if it were a contemporary romance. Unlike other similar romances, ordinary Molly is truly pretty ordinary, and Azrael/Death/Dee is as weird and alien as you’d expect an ageless being who has existed from the beginning of time to be. I loved the author’s writing style, her sentence structure was so fun and playful and I also felt like she had an amazing grasp on the medical side of things when it came to describing various deaths and other events (enough that I’m sure she or someone in her family has a medical background). That’s probably not important to most people but if you’re like me and medical inaccuracies bother you it can be quite the relief! ⁣
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There are some bits I found a little icky, descriptions of Death’s body and bodily functions in particular, but these petered out pretty quickly. There’s also a trope I know a lot of people hate that I was initially uneasy about, but was really glad about the direction the story went. ⁣
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Overall this is a really sweet, cosy love story that goes beyond the bounds of a typical romance and explores the years of life together, and the challenge of a mortal human and an immortal celestial entity in a way that most books of this genre don’t. I also loved Death, who is so innocent and gentle, fascinated by the everyday parts of human life and also so terrified by every terrible thing he has seen across the millennia. Truly a very different take on these sorts of stories. ⁣
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Thank you to NetGalley and Maria Vale for the ARC. This book is out on 4th April.

How....strange.
I like...think I get what this was trying to do; a humorous, off-beat, hijinks and chaos sort of set up. But, gosh it was just so cringey, I pushed through 50 pages purely so I had read enough that I felt I could voice a proper opinion on it.
It felt very flat which if I were to compare it to other novels in this writing style (not necessarily subject/plot) like The Princess Bride, Good Omens, 1000 Stitches, and Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faerires there is a glaring fault between intention and execution. Light fantasy and light fantasy rom-coms are having are having a great surge at the moment; they're fun, they're easy to engage with
I think it was just trying too hard to be that quirky fantasy book. The way the angels spoke in all tenses and collective 'we' voice was just headache inducing trying to decipher and follow for the most part. If you want Death to be this bumbling, can't spell in English, 'yuh-oh' type character you need to be doing more character exploring to explain to your readers why this 200k year old eternal being is like that or he just comes across as a joke. Same goes for Molly; she's this chip on her shoulder, no nonsense character but she's also just...there. Maybe you get a better impression of the leads later on in the book but why would I want to keep reading to get to that? You want to connect with characters early on so you're motivated to keep reading but just nothing was connecting here.

When I started this book, I had not the slightest idea what I was reading and my brain kind of felt like spaghetti. By the end of it, I was definitely more invested in the characters.
Molly & Dee really got my heartstrings.
I think the concept of the book is really interesting and different, but there was a lot of it that didn’t connect and made it more confusing to understand the seemingly more important parts/plots.

Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to read and review.
Really intriguing representation of Death and his journey of learning what it really means to love and be a human. I liked the narrative and the pacing of the story and I love that it wasn't a fully romantic novel. The romance was a core, but there was quite a lot developing around it, which made the story really interesting.

An awkward, blundering Death. An isolated, cynical young woman. Match made in Heaven! I really didn’t expect to enjoy this so much. Smart, witty, sad and hopeful….such a quick, fun read.

The Angel of Death has been at his current job for two hundred thousand in years and in all that time, he had not made any mistakes…mostly. When the angel also known as Azrael inadvertently takes the wrong soul and saves the life of Molly Molloy choking on a chicken wing, big changes start to happen for him. Molly, whose grandmother Death just took, has lost everyone in her life she loved including her parents, a boyfriend, and other grandparents. Now because of this strange occurrence, Molloy can see and talk to Death in a way only other mortals can right when they are about to leave this earthly plane.

Death is a rather self-effacing being; he is often in trouble with the celestial bosses. Death lives in a shabby apartment above a Popeye’s almost bumbling around his job, stealing food, and trying to shape himself into looking somewhat human. Those in the upper reaches that Death answers to are less than pleased with his monumental mistake of letting Molly live despite her number being up so to speak. Molly is a hardworking young woman spending several hours a week working in a brestaurant while studying to be a paramedic.
Dee, as Molly calls him, spends more time following her around while not always being helpful with his interruptions. Whenever they are together, time freezes and occasionally Molly does things that stop Death from his intended job. Death is a surprisingly humble being who has little to no social skills and is clearly very lonely. He must deal with some very oddball and demanding Powers That Be, who are strange and at times confusing celestial bosses in charge of what happens to souls, known to them in the pejorative term “rags.”

Although Death had been exposed to incredible numbers of people in their last moments and those around them, he has never really understood living until Molly came into his existence. Death’s only friend until now was Miriam (Hebrew for Mary), the Queen of Heaven. As he and Molly spend time together, Dee begins to reevaluate all he has been taught about humans; he is a very solitary being and that the only true joy he knows is being with her.

This metaphysical fiction has some humorous as well as poignant moments, and admittedly, some that are a tad confusing, in a richly imagined story especially when Death tries function in the human world. Fans of Ms. Vale Legends of All Wolves series will fine this tale quirky and quite a departure from those other stories, but with the same well-crafted and unique writing style.

thank you netgalley for providing an ARC copy in exchange for a honest review.

I chose this book based off the cover at first. I like the way it looks and its actually really pretty. I read the description and it was a bit interesting so I thought Ill give it a chance. The description fell a bit flat for me but I could see where it was going. The writing style is a bit weird personally thought. Nothing grammatically wrong but they seem a but off. Hopefully they can do a reread one more time to fix those little things because it made it a bit difficult to read at some points. I enjoyed deaths character a lot but he fell flat in some sections. i understood why he viewed humas the way they were but i wished it was described differently if that makes sense. then the pregnancy trope. personally I hate that trope it ruins the book and the characters for me and it just like ruins the plot line when it was going well. 3.5 stars

Death had always been a large part of Molly Molloy’s life, but she didn’t realize that one day he would save her life. Death lived since the beginning of time without ever knowing Molly’s name, while remembering the names of those she lost. Once he knew her name, he didn’t want to forget it.

I really enjoyed this story’s commentary on life, love, and immortality. It made me laugh, cry, and feel grateful for the unknowable amount of time in this life and the next that I will get to spend with my husband.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

Maria Vale does weird very, very well. Her otherworldly characters aren't just not-human, they are BAFFLED by humans. This book is no exception. I loved it in all its quirky, messy glory.

If you're a romance reader, Maria has been very clear: Death is immortal and Molly is not. However, I would argue that there is a lovely supernatural get-out-of-HEA-jail-free card built into the end.

I was given an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wasn't expecting a love story when picking this book, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. It was sweet and well thought out and didn't act as the entire focus of the story. Instead, it felt more like a coming of age for Death, who learns firsthand how to really be human. This different approach to portraying Death was a breath of fresh air and so well executed, I'm so glad I chose this book. There are dark moments which are well balanced with light-hearted scenes, hope and heartbreak, and you really get to see Molly and Dee grow throughout their story.