I was so excited to read this book. It was on my list of books that I was anticipating for 2023. There were so many things that I loved about this read. The world building and system of magic are really beautiful. I also really liked the characters and the development of their relationship. I felt that this book had pacing issues. It had a major lull in the middle and then picked up and was very fast toward the end. This was rather jarring because of the lull. Overall, I did really like this book though.

*I received an advanced digital copy of this book, courtesy of the author and the publisher, via Netgalley.*

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced reading copy of the witch and the vampire by Francesca Flores. This was fantastic. Two young friends separated with grave circumstances are able to reconnect and slowly realize their feelings for each other. All the wild they are on opposite sides of a war. Fighting for the right to live and die.

Kaye and Ava used to be best friends, until one night two years ago when Kaye's mother was murdered and Ava was turned into a vampire and they haven't seen each other since. Ava has been locked away by her mother ever since and Kaye is on a warpath, as a witch, to become a proper vampire hunter.
Now, their paths are crossing again and their goals could not be more different, yet they'll have to find some common grounds...

I didn't really dislike this, I just had some trouble getting through it. Mostly, I think, I expected quite a lot and was disappointed. It just read like a story I've read before. I wasn't captivated, hell, I was even a little bored. I don't think there was necessarily something wrong with it, I just wasn't into it like I thought I would be. It felt like nothing new. It might just be me and the fact that I read too much though. I don't think this should deter anyone from reading this. It was bad by any mean, I just was enthralled by it. I've finished it less than ten days ago and I could not tell you any personality trait for either of the main characters nor could I have told you their names if not for the Goodreads summary. Or any other characters' name for that matter.
Basically, this was a bit of a miss for me but I'll still keep an eye out for other books by this author.

A queer Rapunzel/witch/vampire reimagining. Ava - turned into a vampire and locked away by her mother. Kaye - a fire witch determined to avenge her mothers death. These two former friends must team up and learn to trust each other again as they learn who the real enemy is.
This book was sadly kind of a mess. It felt like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be YA or not. A lot of the subjects are really heavy but dealt with like they’re flippant and then the small problems are made to feel much bigger? By the end of the book I was just waiting for it to be over.

I was extremely excited for this book based on the description. The cover is amazing. The narrator does a great job. Everything could have been great, but the story was lacking. The characters were very flat. The world building was ok. The plot seems formulaic. I had a very hard time staying engaged with this story.

Sapphic witch and vampire? YES PLEASE!
Absolutely fantastic retelling! The slow romance and atmosphere drags you into the story, and is so easy to fly through it. The characters are so cute together and the whole book you are so excited for them to get together! This is a must red for all my sapphic readers out there. While there does need to be some polishing typo wiser (which will probably be fixed for the finished edition) I think this was a wonderful book and really enjoyed it.

Also PLEASE MAKE A SECOND BOOK! I CANT HANDLE THE ENDING, I NEED MORE

I wanted this book to be good. So badly. But I was not a fan. First of all, the way this book has been pitched… it’s definitely a stretch. Secondly, the writing in this is very much telling and not showing. It makes it hard to becoming connected to the story and the characters, and it wasn’t engaging. The narrator though was great, which is the only reason I listened as long as I could.

I don't give myself enough chances to read YA and I feel like I miss out on the joy of this genre. Add a super fantastical world with its own laws of magic and physics plus this is such a great Rapunzel retelling, just made for a great adorable and adventurous journey. The beautiful way both characters have inner development was splendid. I do feel that there were some emotions that did get glossed over, and that some emotions like the anger were drawn out a tad too long. But over all a great story.

Thank you net galley for sending me an advanced readers copy of the witch and the vampire in exchange for a honest review.


I'm sad to announce that this one of the books I was most excited to get to this year completely failed regarding my expectations. The sentence structure was Extremely weird at times, throwing me consistently off the story. Along with that the plot of the book itself was...... certainly something. It made 0 sense at times and so did the characters themselves which felt so underdeveloped that I simply could not care about them

I love the cover of this book, and the synopsis makes it sound like a lot of fun- a sapphic Rapunzel retelling with witches and vampires. If nothing else I expected a campy romp, at best a magical, romantic fantasy. Neither one was really hit for me.

I do like the theme of mothers and daughters- and parents in general, if we're looking beyond the leads. I think this book plays off of the Tangled/Mother Gothel lens primarily, and does do some interesting introspection with that relationship. It's nice to see varied representations of parental relationships and how they effect the child, the world, and the story.

However, this was a story near impossible to sink my teeth into. The characters feel mostly flat- Ava in particular feels very much like was a stand in for Tangled-Rapunzel, and everyone else barely had personalities. I wanted to enjoy the romance but the lack of characterization was only further hurt by a lack of any real chemistry. It felt more like the romance was injected into scenes of their past than built or nurtured on page.

And the world building was too sparse to feel connected to. It's mostly all about anti-vampire sentiments, but the prejudice didn't even feel dug into deeply enough to be saying anything, or be reacted to properly by the people involved. It felt much more like we were supposed to fill in the blanks from assumptions than it was meant to give any real information.
I also didn't connect to the writing style, which felt equally as sparse.

I wanted to love this book, and I was excited by the concept, but overall it never hooked me and left me unsatisfied.

Definitely think the book needs trigger warnings at the end of the synopsis. Will give the reader a better understanding of what they are getting into especially with triggering topics.

I requested this ARC based on a review by @exclusivepalmbeachliving This is the first book in all my time on Booktok that was dubbed an “enemies to lovers” that actually is an enemies to lovers. Like at some point or another both want to destroy or seek vengeance on the other. I consider that enemies. Typically booktok “enemies to lovers” are just miscommunication/socially awkward to lovers.
I’m still new to fantasy books and not sure they are for me but I enjoyed this one. It does feel like it’s a set up for a series the entire way through (including how it ended) so that makes it feel a hair daunting at times. A friend of mine who reads fantasy said that isn’t uncommon for the first book in a series to have a lot of world building to get ready for the story to happen in later books.
I liked the relationship between the two main characters as they grew into their own powers and refound trust, friendship, and love that had been lost.
I do think the book does itself a disservice by claiming to be a Repunzel retelling. Maybe that was the original idea or something but that lil story-ish line was dropped so quick. The hair seemed to hold no power. It just seemed kinda pointless and thrown in so it could claim to be a Sapphic Repunzel. I don’t think people enjoy the lil bate and switches the publishing industry marketing teams seem so found of, even something this small.
Overall good book I’ll check out the rest of the series for sure.
TW: abusive parents

So I see that many people weren't fans of this book, but I actually really enjoyed it! Granted I did listen to the audiobook, so that may have made a difference.

I love the premise of this book. A sapphic Rapunzel retelling with vampires and witches who happen to be enemies in this society. Kay and Ava were once best friends until Ava was turned mysteriously into a vampire. Now Kay has to pretend as if her friend is dead and kill her if she has a chance.

The quest and adventure of this book was fun. I'm not sure if it is a stand alone or a series, but it can definitely end after this one. I do think it would be fun for a sequel though. Overall, this was a fun read.

Thank you Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for an audiobook arc of this title in exchange for an honest review!

The Witch and the Vampire by Francesca Flores revolves around the two main characters Kaye, a flame witch, and Eva, a root witch and vampire. They were best friends, but since Eva got turned into a vampire and locked away by her mother everything changed.

I really wanted to enjoy this book and the story itself, but there were a ton of rough edges, which made this quite a challenge. The characters are overall very shallow and flat. They exist only for revenge or survival. That's literally all. The relationships between the characters are literally jumping around like a bouncy ball. Kaye is like within two minutes: I have to kill Ava, because she is a vampire.... but I like her.... But I have to kill her, because I hate all vampires ... but she saved me ... etc.
I really thought I will go crazy. The voice actors were okay for the shallow characters. But why do I have to make a 18 year old girl sound like a toddler? I put the audiobook on double speed to get through it faster, because the voices kind of annoyed me.
The story itself felt it get dragged into length to bring it up to a certain page amount like meetings that could have been an email. Plot twists could have been predicted from the very first page.
The book had potential but it didn't live up to it unfortunately. I'm disappointed.

This book had promise but alas it was just kind of average. I will say though, the narration on this was kind of great - mostly due to the fact that it meant I could easily work out who was narrating at any given time - both characters have similar sentence structure and tone, therefore I feel like I would have easily mixed up whose POV I was reading if I had have read a physical or ebook copy.

The two main characters have known each other their whole lives and then suddenly when one disappears with relatively no explanation, life goes on. Problem is, the second girl is trapped in her mothers attic being experimented on by her step father. It all seemed a little odd, but hey who am I to judge how people treat their friends.

For the most part, theres a consistent backwards and forwards with some relatively generic vampire and companion banter as they venture through the woods. I will admit, the first half was very tedious and I increased the speed to that point whereby the track is almost incomprehensible as a result of the fact that I was very bored. Once you get to around the half way point, it picked up speed but never really redeemed itself to a point that I would shout its praises.

The characters, while likeable, didn't seem fully fleshed out instead being very shallow and leaving me unable to sympathise to their plight for the majority of the novel. I did, however, enjoy the final 10% once "things" happened and everyone headed back to town.

Overall, its not the absolute masterpiece that the beautiful cover would suggest but if you choose to spend the time to read it, its not an absolute waste of time. A very average YA novel with a predictable and relatively generic plot

Thank you to NetGalley for this audiobook.

This queer retelling of Rapunzel is so sweet it’s hard not to fall in love with the protagonists. Ava and Kay and former best friends that have become enemies who are forced to escort one another through the woods. Full of magic, this coming of age romance doesn’t stray too far from the fairytale despite the characters being a witch and a vampire. If you like fantasy, fairytales, and wlw romance you would enjoy this book. I

I can tell you that The Witch and the Vampire is a highly anticipated sapphic Rapunzel retelling with witches and vampires, which sounds like everything I would want in a book. The book didn't quite live up to all my expectations, but I still enjoyed it. The relationship between the two main characters, Ava and Kaye, was the most compelling part of the story. The slow burn romance between them was well-done, with the perfect amount of tension. I was rooting for them the whole time. However, the pacing of the rest of the story was a bit off, with parts of the plot dragging and others going by too quickly. The world-building fell flat for me. I still enjoyed it, and I would be interested in reading more about Ava and Kaye.

I had high hopes after seeing the title and cover, but I was really disappointed. This book actually deserves its average rating on Goodreads. This ARC was clearly not ready for release, as certain sections are missing or in the wrong places. There were words that appeared in the middle of phrases, terms that were used incorrectly, and... the end of chapter 13 was a jumbled mess, with one scene ending suddenly and the next sentence beginning in the middle of the action of another. It was an embarrassment to parse. Everything felt predictable and uninteresting, and the writing was juvenile, telling rather than showing. There was also a lack of description and little effort put into worldbuilding, lore, relationships, romance, and stakes. The novel is brief, yet by the 40% mark, very nothing has transpired. Without Ava's knowledge or agreement, her mother manipulates, imprisons, kills, and transforms her into a vampire. The tone of the piece is far too light for the subject matter. Strange racism and the possibility of genocide or the extinction of an entire species lurk beneath the surface, but these themes are treated very...lightly? In what ways can racial and species bias be introduced covertly and never addressed? It's as if the author was trying to cover all the bases while appealing to today's current teen audience.

I received this book for free from netgalley for an honest opinion.
I struggled reading this at first and connecting with the characters however as I went through the story I was able to really understand where they were both coming from. The world building was very good but the character building seem to be what kept me reading.

This was a fun YA fantasy with dystopian vibes. Ava and Kaye were both compelling characters, and I was intrigued by the way Tristan fit into both their former friendship and their current situation. It was also interesting to see how the three of them related to their respective parents. The love story was tentative and sweet. I think this is a standalone, but I can definitely see potential for a follow-up book.

The audiobook is narrated by Bailey Carr and Mary Helen Gallucci. I’m glad that there were separate voices for Ava and Kaye’s chapters. It allowed me to differentiate the characters better and made them both feel more real.

The Witch and the Vampire is a young adult sapphic friends-to-enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance and Rapunzel retelling. The story was fun and I loved the dual POV. The setting was interesting too, but I found myself wishing the author dived a bit more into the world-building.

Thank you Netgalley for providing a digital ARC.