3.5 stars

Overall I enjoyed this book. The storyline kept me interested enough to finish and it was a quick easy read.

Told through three different POV’s I do have to admit that I found myself rather bored through one of them (Aylin, I’m looking at you girl). But knowing Yara and Eldar’s POV’s were just a short chapter away kept me going.

I didn’t really like that both sisters have a love triangle going on. One is good enough and the conflict with Aylin’s original love interest could’ve been interesting enough without adding in another love interest for her too.

I also wished more would’ve happened between their love interests beyond a couple kisses and longing stares.

Like I said though, overall I did enjoy this book and will be picking up the next one to see what happens in everyone’s story next.

Thank you to Netgalley, Northern Light Press and the author for this arc.

There is not a lot for me to write a review on about this (masterpiece) book. For me, a review should point out the defects and/or the prefects in a particular book. But this one, my God. I don't need to write one because every thing literally EVERYTHING was perfect. I loves this book so much.

The characters, the pacing, the writing, the writing style, the way the characters clashed together, the love stories, the background, the connections, the plot and sosososo much more!!

Loved this book and will definitely be requesting/read the arc/published copy of the second book!

***thank you Netgalley for the Arc***

This book was intense! It’s 3am as I write this review having just finished the book after not being able to put it down. The characters and storyline are INSANE. The twists and turns and the ability to make you love a character and hate them a chapter later, the ability to make you love and hate a character at the same time. The characters are deep, really deep and they’re so much happening but you never get lost in it. Not to mention some Turkish/middle eastern representation I think the book word is lacking. This book makes other winged men books look like child’s play. Don’t pass this one up

This book was even better then I could have imagined. I honestly can't wait for other people to read it because it's so imaginative and fun. Bringing a new world to Vampires and the worlds that surround them.
Just be careful this book will definitely have you wishing for the next in the series to come.

This book had more darker themes than I was anticipating. I decided to stop reading. The use and abuse of Yara turned me off.

I think the book is great for those who love dark romance. Just not my cup of tea.

I’m heavily into world building so the first bit of this I was very, VERY nervous. However I stuck it out and once you got past the initial confusion it blew me away. So impressed, I wish there was a bit more clarification up front (or some form of a directory in the back) but once you really throw yourself into it you are in and have so much fun!!

This book…seriously give it a chance! This book blew me away, I cannot wait for more of these characters. I found them all quirky in their own ways, and it was a pleasant, relatable, and fast read. At first I was nervous because I didn’t understand some of the terms used - but I didn’t let that stop me and I feel like I walked away with knowledge and a wonderful story!

I DNFed this at around 5% which is very unusual for me as I am typically able to push through exposition that I find really boring and slow-paced, especially with far to much info-dumping at the onset. This however had the opposite. There was a LOT of telling and not showing and the pacing was strange. I wanted to truly love this as I LOVE the concept.

I've placed it into my book purgatory as I would be willing to come back to read it if there was a strong edit of the book to be more considerate of the pacing in particular. I've seen tons of reviews talking about how they love the romance in this and I wish I could feel I would be able to wait it out. I'm a mood reader and stressed right now so my tolerance was low.

NO RATINGs for DNFs unless for content reasons. Given a 2 for this review on NETGALLEY.

Thank you to Netgalley, Northern Light Press and the author for this arc!

3.5 stars

When Aylin’s sister Yara disappears, stories from their childhood of creatures of the night are brought back into light. Disguised as a man, Aylin joins a group of hunters of the vampirs in hopes to find her sister. While Yara navigates the world of the Undead where two twins' obsession with her makes her a target and also a major threat.

I always love seeing authors mix history with fantasy especially when it’s a time period I don’t really know much about. I think the author did a good job of that.
This book was rich with morally grey characters. I generally didn’t know who I should/wanted to root for. Although, I always loved Yara and Aylin. They stood up for themselves even when it got them in trouble.
Yara’s pov was, by far, the best part of the book. I loved her interactions with the twins and watching her play the deadly game of the court. I’m curious to see what the author will do with Yara’s story moving forward. I really hope a romance with the one twin (avoiding spoilers), never happens. This could have easily become like every other vampire/monster romance and all evil acts against the FMC are forgiven by the end, but it wasn’t. That's what I liked about it. Although both girls did find some sympathy for the evil men in the povs, they never forgave them. Unfortunately for Yara’s story, I’m afraid it will not stay that way moving forward.
I liked Aylin, but her side of the story wasn’t very interesting. I found IIyas irritating and didn’t like the back and forth between them. Domenico was so incredibly evil and not in a fun way like Eldar. Makes me sick reading his interactions with Aylin.
Overall, this was a good twist on a vampire story! If you like morally grey characters and political intrigue, you might like this one.

I will post my review on Instagram close to the publication date.

Okay but I think this book deserves some more hype! I just spent the last four hours reading it, and finished it within just over two days. Thank you to NetGalley for a digital arc in exchange for my honest review.

This book is DEFINITELY for the Damon girlies. If you need to know more, please continue to read this spoiler free review. But I think that alone says enough!

You have two sisters, who are opposites in many ways aside from their unrelenting bravery. When one is kidnapped by vampirs to be a blood slave, the other and her childhood friend run off to save her.

The morally (dark) grey men in this book really have me questioning myself… (I had written “sexy in a Stockholm Syndrome way” in my notes) and there are more than a couple of them. LOTS for tension in here. Enemies/rivals to.. enemies? Lovers? Idk… but for a book without any *actual* spice (if you know what I mean) it was still VERY spicy. I think it would have been nice to give the readers a little more somethin somethin as far as you knowwww goes just because it’s so tensiony.. but it’s okay, because the vibes.. the *essence* of the spice, was still scrumptious.

I mean dayum- we are given MULTIPLE “he’s obsessed with her”s.. “you’re mine” “if you hurt her again I’ll k— you” AND “Good girl” moments. 🥵 for a book that didn’t have anyone getting freaky, it was still very much so giving for the girlies. I shouldn’t be feeling this way about these bad-bad men, and yet! 🫣

Oh and you have a morally good guy, he cute too.

Aside from that, you have high stakes, bipoc representation- the main characters are women of color and in general there is a lot of blending of other cultures/some discussion on prejudice, Muslim representation, body representation both for a curvy thick character and a more “boyish” one (if you read the book you’ll get it), deception, enemies/friends with tension, love triangles, bravery, court life/politics, jealousy, spies, and of course.. vampires.

I’m not a fan of “dark romance” as it has come to be known on social media, but this definitely edges along there just enough to be like adjacent to that vibe, without fully going there. I’m down with that.

I’ll be reading the next one!

I will say I had a hard time finding the author on social media, and I think they’re putting out a well written and entertaining story, it would be beneficial to be more active on there to help build more of that hype!

Don't you just hate it when a book has elements that you love but the execution don't work for you? This is not your average fantasy romance book and for that I truly commend it. Unfortunately it is also a very flawed book, at least in my opinion. But let's try to figure out if it could be for you.

In The Court of the Dead we follow sisters Aylin and Yara. But honestly I'm not sure if anybody cares all that much about Aylin. Yara gets kidnapped by vampires and brought to their court of their undead. Yara wants to bring her back but does it by a lot of rather boring travelling with her childhood friend and training with soldiers that want to kill vampires. Yara on the other hand decides that she is not going to sit around waiting to be recued. Instead, she begins to scheme for power without hesitating to double-cross anyone if a higher bidder can offer her more in return for her services.

That sounds kind of fun right? At least Yara's storyline? I loved that Yara only grows more merciless the longer she is trapped in the vampire court, that she utilizes the political intrigues at court to her advantage. And I haven't even started telling you about the truly unhinged romance interests. Are they even romance interests or just straight up villains? Even now that I have finished the book I can't quite tell. And I absolutely love that. Some characters starts out as straight up psychopaths only to be kind of redeemed later on, others does the opposite. Pretty much all of them have this creepy obsession with our heroines rather than something as mundane as "feelings". It's definitely dark but also work better because it isn't framed as romantic. That being said, maybe it's a tad over the top that there a three different male characters that individually develop an obsession with one or the other sister. However, if you're going to do a villain romance, this is the way to do it, don't change the entire personality of the villain just because he starts having feelings and have the heroine be just as ruthless.

That's some glowing praise right? So why am I still so disappointed? The actual writing my friends. This is not something new, plenty of popular authors do it to me. There's a ridiculous amount of telling instead of showing, especially in the beginning. There's no build up of tension in scenes that really would have needed it to make an impact. An entire fight to de death can be over in less than a page. Other things just don't make sense. Like ripping someone's heart out in the middle of a dance floor and walking out with it without anybody being able to figure out that you did it. If it wasn't for my fascination with the villain romances and corruption arcs mentioned above I wouldn't have cared enough about anything to want to finish it.

That being said, Belladonna for example is super popular and to me that one have about the same level of writing as The Court of the Undead so it still might be for you. But maybe don't expect any true romance, there's basically just weird obsessions and schemes going on here.

There's "morally grey" love interests, and then there's whatever horrible thing these vile people were. This book makes other villains look like puppies and rainbows. In a good way.

The Court of the Undead follows two sisters, Aylin and Yara, who live in the Sultan's court in the Ottoman Empire. One day, Yara gets stolen by vampir and Aylin sets off to rescue her along with Ilyas, one of the Sultan's soldiers. Meanwhile, Yara gets dragged into the dangerous politics of the court of the Undying King, Dracul, and attracts the attention of two monstrous brothers. The Demirci twins, Volkan and Eldar, claim Yara as their blood slave and want to use her for their pleasure and as a pawn. Aylin and Ilyas, on the other hand, make their way to Venice to infiltrate a Christian sect of vampir hunters to free Yara.

This was Castlevania meets The Vampire Diaries, placed in a fascinating historical setting. While I found the Court of the Undead and its creepy castle in the mountains the more riveting setting, I liked the historical elements in both Yara and Aylin's storylines. Aylin's story, in particular, gives more of an insight into Muslim and Ottoman culture and practices. I found these elements very interesting since my historical knowledge of the Ottoman Empire is lacking, to be honest. With that being said, the historical aspects were not difficult to grasp at all and you don't need any prior knowledge to enjoy this story whatsoever.

The plot and pacing were great, this is one of the rare occasions where I can confidently say that there was never (!) a dull moment in this book. While Yara's story is leaning heavily into the court politics and intrigues, Aylin's plotline is more of a typical adventure story, but I found myself immensely entertained by both. While at first I thought I would favour Yara's character, by the end, I loved both sisters equally. While Aylin is more of a firecracker, Yara is described as the "soft", kind, feminine sister. So Yara's tenacity in surviving a court of literal monsters impressed me and I loved how she didn't cower before them but instead perservered and outmaneuvered them. Aylin was short-tempered and sometimes thoughtless in her actions, I loved her a whole lot and couldn't help but laugh at her sharp wit and insults.

With that being said, with the exception of the sisters, everyone in this book was a vile and horrible person. I'm not being hyperbolic here, folks. These vampires are actual monsters, none of that sparkly Twilight bullshit. Think Castlevania vampires, but so much worse. While we do learn the character's backgrounds and can understand why they are the way they are, some of them were truly sadistic, evil beings.

It feels strange to say I liked the characters, in light of just how truly awful they are, but I will say I was immensely entertained by them. The author truly made you root for villains but yet never excused their behaviour, which I liked. The book fully acknowledged the toxicity of some of the relationships and none of the characters are forgiven easily. Still, sometimes I would laugh at things they said, and then I would feel bad because they're awful. This book is not for the faint hearted, or the lawfully good. But if you love a good villain, you will love The Court of the Undead.

In this light, if you are uncomfortable with darker elements in romance, I'd caution you reading this. In Yara's story especially, there are some questions of consent, since she's often involuntarily bitten by the vampire brothers, being their literal blood slave. When I say this is a villain romance, I am not fucking around. Neither Volkan nor Eldar get a redemption arc, if anything, at least one of them gets progressively worse. They treat Yara much like an object or a pet at best in the beginning, and none of the romantic elements are what you would call wholesome.

However, while I am not a fan of love triangles, the one here was well done. The relationships were very much slow-burns and even by the end, I could not tell you which couple would be endgame. I do have my preferred option, but it honestly could go either way. Comparisons with The Vampire Diaries come to mind, what with the vampire brothers obsessing over the same girl. If you were a fan of Damon Salvatore, I'm positive you will like Eldar. Just having played Baldur's Gate 3, Volkan's story was also really reminding me of Astarion, which was great.

Aylin has another love triangle, where one side is forbidden love and the other is, for lack of a better word, a bully romance. As I said, the relationships in this book are slow-burn and I would even say there's no actual romance in The Court of the Undead, yet. There is obsession, and sexual tension, and begrudging understanding, but the characters haven't fallen in love yet. Which made a lot of sense given the treatment the sisters are put through, so I liked that no one had actually gotten together yet.

As for the writing style, while the dialogue was great and all the characters had distinct voices, there were some instances of telling instead of showing which took me out of the story. Things such as "she felt afraid" instead of showing the fear through heart pounding, sweaty palms, etc. or info-dumping instead of showing the worldbuilding organically. Overall, I found the descriptions and prose to be weaker than the dialogue, but the author still invoked some strong images and the atmosphere was great. Thus, I was willing to forgive some clunky word and writing choices.

All in all, if you love a villain that's actually villanous, stabby women, and court intrigue, I reckon you will love The Court of the Undead.

I love vampire stories, so when I saw that this book was about vampires I wanted to read it immediately and I was not disappointed!

I loved this book and I am very excited to continue this series once the next book comes out! I will definitely be reading the next one as well!

One thing I really enjoyed (besides the vampire theme) was the character development. Already throughout the first book I feel like all of our main characters are changing and growing very well.

I would really recommend this to anyone who either just loves vampire books in general or to people who enjoy a good political supernatural/fantasy story.

!!SPOILER!!
My only complaint is that the ending felt a bit rushed. Especially from Aylins POV. The last we see of her point of view is their first night camping on their way to the vampire castle and suddenly they are already there. Since she has been sharing a tent with her enemy (maybe future lover) and he knew that she’s a woman at the point, I feel like there should have been more dialog or/and action between the two.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publishers and of course the author for gifting me this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed reading this dark fantasty book which reminded me a bit of From Blood and Ash crossd with castlevania (I love the narrator on that show hah). Following two sisters, Yara and Aylin, who were brought up with paranormal tales by their nursemaid, only to find out that the tales are not just stories but reality, which they discover when Yara is kidnapped and Aylin sets off on an adventure to get her back.

A lot of tension and slow burn dark romance - I definitely hope there is another book!

The Court of the Undead by F.M aden drew me in with a potential enemies to lovers situation and kept me hooked with slowly unfolding political fantasy intrigue. Whatever I expected going in this title has far exceeded and I can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy.

I had trouble getting into it at first, but once the story starts to unfold, it’s an entertaining read. Especially Yara's story. Her journey surviving in the vampire court with all the manipulation, intrigues, and backstabbing isvery fun to read. Aylin, on the other hand, i found a bit unlikeable, which made her pov less interesting. Of the two sisters, she undergoes the least growth. But overall, an intriguing book with a interestuing cliffhanger at the end. Looking forward to the next one.

I got this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Set in the Ottoman empire, a high-standing family is forever changed when one of two sisters, Yara, is kidnapped and taken to the vampir court of Vlad Dracul to be sold as a blood slave. This was an interesting story of a young woman caught in the political wars of a foreign court, an almost-love-triangle, and the ever-shifting tides of allegiances influenced by deaths, marriages, and sires within powerful vampir families. Her sister, Aylin, also faces many obstacles as she tries to make her way to the vampir court to attempt to rescue Yara, as she poses as a boy alongside a soldier serving her family, Ilyas, to join the leagues of vampir hunters hoping to eliminate the species altogether in order to save her sister. Overall, this was a captivating read and I look forward to the sequel!

2.5* Thank you NetGalley for a copy of “The Court of the Undead”! This story ultimately fell flat for me, the beginning of the book dragged and I never thought I would see an end in sight but then the last like 15% seemed to go way too quickly and that could’ve been flushed out more. I wish this wasn’t a dual POV because I could’ve cared less about Aylins POV and her weird relationship she had with that sketchy guy.

4 stars

ARC review from NetGalley

This book was unique and I thoroughly enjoyed the diversity of it. It started off quite slow and boring for me, but it took a turn quite quickly.

The story following Yara was thoroughly enjoyable and I loved how strong and determined she was when it came to surviving in court life. The two brothers make things interesting, but I would have loved to have seen the story drawn out a lot more so there was a slower, more deserving redemption arc from one and fall from the other.

The other POV following Aylin was similar in the sense that it felt rushed and slightly lacking due to the pace. I didn’t enjoy this side of the story any where near as much as I enjoyed Yaras.

There wasn’t much time to bond with a lot of the characters, so certain scenes was really missing the emotion from it.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and am interested in seeing where the series heads!

I could not get into this story no matter how hard I tried. My attention was not gripped by anything in the story. I hope others can like it though.

Thank you Netgalley for the ebook!