3.5 Stars (rounded up).

I loved the unique story and magical elements. Some of the world building felt a bit chunky to get into, but the last 30% of this book is where it shines. Once the world and characters are established, and the stakes are made clearer to the reader, it’s an engrossing high fantasy.

I’m excited to see where the story goes next. I think the sequel will have the bones to be incredibly strong.

Thank you to Orbit and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Wow!!! Round of applause for a stunning first book!!!

KJ this was dope. I’m here for the witches and I’m here for the sexy love. I want more and need more.

I do hope we do a bit less world building in book 2. But being on the magic and spice!

Thanks Netgalley for the arc!

A fascinating look at what's behind the veil with a romance that leaves you on the edge of your seat. I only wish that I had more world building about all the witches and the life they were living. It felt like I was thrust into a world and even the narrator didn't understand it all.

When I first read the synopsis of this book I wasn't sure how it was going to be....and was pleasantly surprised. The characters are all well developed and the story is robust. The pacing of the book was fast, but didn't rush the story.

The Warden was an ever present looming evil. that I love wasn't over played. He was just there creeping in the background which made him even more imposing!

I am excited to see where the future books go and would love to see how the other 2 covens are brought in. There is some mystery to this that has only started to be explored.

Thank you Net Galley for the chance to enter this new world.

I really enjoyed this book! It definitely had me hooked from the start and kept me engaged throughout! I needed to know what was going to happen. I really liked the world and thought it was so unique. We only see such a small part of this world, but it was interesting. I really enjoyed how there were deferent kinds of witches as well and I hope we get to see more of their different powers in the next book. I really love the Thorn witch power and how they go into Death and are protectors of Death.

I did feel that the relationships between Penny/Malin, and Penny/Alice were rushed though. We didn't see much with them building a relationship and then all of a sudden they were in love. I'm all for insta-love. But there were so little interactions between them it was . I really hope we get more of them in the next book.

This was a great, emotional fantasy story and I cannot wait for the next book!

OH MAN!

Already finished and am rabid for book two. I absolutely loved this. The magic, the legends and lore, the rebellion?! Amazing.

You will not want to put this down!

I received this very pretty book as an Arc from Netgalley and Orbit Books. Firstly I loved the cover. The description while intriguing enough to pick up didn't really stick in my memory though. Not sure why and possibly nothing against its layout just didn't click. The book overall worked pretty well as a set-up book.

In this story, we follow Penelope Albright. She is the granddaughter of the Thorn Queen. Being the youngest she doesn't have to worry about being heir to the coven though. No, Penny has other issues arising. The book is set just a few days before her 21st birthday. Penny is filled with worry about having to walk into death for the first time. All the witches live in fear but Penny is still young enough to have hopes. Early on we also see her desire to be good enough for her grandmother mixed with a streak of rebellion in what she'll say.

What is this walking in death you might ask? Well as thorn witches they have the unique ability to step into the land of death at the time of their passing. Then at the next dawn, they cross the veil back into the living. Normally this is done by burning at the stake or taking a poison that burns you from the inside. There is also a spell that must be said to part the veil. Only thorn witches have this power; as well as the ability to heal the tears in the veil. This is one of the reasons they are the Warden's prized possessions.

When Penny was younger they lived in a beautiful little village near a wood. Now the Warden controls most of the world and it has become desert waste. He keeps all the witches inside his fortress. There are five different covens of witches in this world. Thorn witches who walk with death. Storm witches who manipulate the weather. Tide witches who obviously work with water. Ore witches shape heavy metals into things of beauty or horror. Ember witches can control the flames. Before being brought to live together they were mostly spread across the continent and only rarely came together for gatherings of leaders. They each have a slightly different creation story which must be passed down orally now. This is due to the Warden purging history of any truth except his own.

Through a good portion of the book, there were additional snippets of stories at the end of chapters. These would be from fairytales or altered books, it always gave an account of where it was from. This will give clues as to what had happened and a truth in the background. At some point, it did stop putting them in though. Thinking back to how the beginning prologue sounded it does seem to clash slightly but fairytales are not really historical truth I suppose.

The romance spoken of in the description. Well, it was something. Don't expect it to be a spicy fantasy because that is not its focus. Will there be a scene or two, sure. There is more intense longing and staring though as the plot moves along. For me this was fine. The part that didn't feel right was more so how it jumped from just being attacked to love without much real interactions.

Since this is put out by Orbit Books it is being sold as adult fantasy. The feel of the book is more new adult range, could even say leans YA at times. Mostly because Penny has been so sheltered that she is naive in thinking. While at the same time, she has had to face the horror of her village being destroyed and slowly losing her family. When having to face her own struggles Penny does freeze but finds the strength to keep going and overcomes these problems more than once.

This is the first book in a planned trilogy. For most of the story, it is doing a good job working on its own. Then there is the end. I liked the world and magic we were seeing set up. The plans being laid out and covens coming together are great. We were put on a timetable so yes things did have to happen urgently. However, the end didn't flow the same as the rest of the book. There are other ways to set up for the second book.

Overall I feel that this was a solid first entry. There were parts that could have been stronger but it was engaging. I liked Penny as a character. Hopefully, through the trilogy, she will grow into a strong person. If the book is going to continue along this romantic angle maybe it could find a better balance.

This was by far the most gripping debut novel I have ever had the utmost pleasure of reading. I couldn’t keep my hands off of it and I will be telling everyone I can to run and pick up this book as soon as it hits the shelves. I loved Penny as a character and I cannot wait to read more of this series. Keep up the amazing work! I’m dazzled by your talent and description. You didn’t just write a book, you painted a whole scene in my mind.

This was absolutely spellbinding and I couldn't put it down. I was absolutely entrantsed by this spellbinding fantasy. I loved Penny's character. I cannot wait to get my hands on the next 4 books in this enticing series. 5 star read!!
I just reviewed Tonight, I Burn by Katharine J. Adams. #NetGalley
[NetGalley URL]

Huge thank you to Orbit (truly an honor) and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
For a debut novel, this was quite exciting and really unique. I love books about witches and this was absolutely up my alley. Full of excitement, magic, romance. I’m looking forward to more from this author.

I am so, so grateful that Orbit’s books tugged me back into the fantasy genre. Tonight, I Burn by Katharine J. Adams is another marvelous addition to anyone’s fantasy bookshelf and shood be added to your TBR pile. Is it my fantasy novel I’ve read recently? No, but I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent in its pages. At one point, I could not sit still. I paced my house for over thirty minutes, biting a fingernail anxiously. No joke, my walking was frantic enough that my Fitbit registered it as exercise. Tonight, I Burn wraps romance, humor, high stakes, and intrigue, and of course, magic.

Witches make up Penny’s family. They carry heavy responsibility on their shoulders—walk into the afterlife each night to protect life as their society knows it. But Penny’s time has not yet come; it looms over her like an ominously dark cloud. But then Penny’s sister, Ella, goes missing after she steps into Death. Throwing the rules to the wind, Penny ventures into the darkness alone to get her sister back. This leads her to an unknown man, seemingly trapped in Death, and eventually, to an uprising of objectors who have hidden themselves. The Warden controls their very lives, and he must be eliminated.

Tonight, I Burn by Katharine J. Adams has so many twists and turns, I grew dizzy. Adams kept me on my toes the entire novel. Yes, it has some clichés—including Malin, a gloomy and misunderstood alpha male—but the tropes did not make me roll my eyes much. Did I? Yes, but I read enough books that it happens with basically any novel. Adams’s writing is effortless and easy to follow. When she introduces new concepts, she does it in such a way that the reader never loses his/her way.

A disclaimer: Tonight, I Burn features LGBTQ themes. And, I’ll be honest, I didn’t look at reviews or the book’s other genres prior to beginning it. So that’s my fault. I’m…not typically a fan of LGBTQ novels, and I wouldn’t necessarily classify Adams’ novel as one. It’s not overwhelming, but it’s definitely there with Penny being bisexual. Though my personal preference is not to read LGBTQ books, nothing in Tonight, I Burn will make me not pick up the second book. Adams’ characters have drawn me in, and I can’t wait to see how they develop as the series continues.

I’ve read a number of witch books this fall and mostly enjoyed them all! Of course, it is the time of year for this type of book, but it also seems that there is a current trend in YA and adult fantasy towards these types of stories recently. That being the case, I was excited to check out this book that promised an intricate new world, darker thematic content, plus a swoon-worthy romance! Unfortunately, while I think it might work well for other readers, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I had hoped.

But let’s start with the positives. Right there in the premise the book is setting up a truly dark existence, one in which a witch must be burned at the stake every night to patrol the realm. Yes, they are meant to come back to life the next day, but that does very little to combat the true horror of a death in that manner every night. This was such an interesting concept to begin with. Added on top of that you have the mystery of why one witch fails to return which propels the action of our heroine. It’s an excellent set up and I was quickly pulled into the general concept of the story.

However, as the book progressed, I began to struggle. First with the heroine herself and then with the romances as they were introduced. Fairly quickly, I began to feel frustrated with Penny and some of her decision making. It felt at times that she was simply doing things to prove that she was doing something in the first place, rather than for any true reason. Moments like this left me with the impression of her as a fairly immature character. Again and again she received praise for making decisions that were, on their face, pretty bad.

And then we get into the romance and the love interests. So, I’ll be honest, part of this is on me in that I read the book description and didn’t pick up on the fact that this was a polyamory story. In my defense, I don’t think it’s super obvious in the summary either. But either way, as a reader I often struggle to enjoy polyamory stories. That being the case, I usually avoid them simply so I don’t have a host of middling to negative reviews here on the blog of a subgenre that I know others enjoy but just aren’t for me. Know thyself and all of that.

This book does a good job (back hand compliment time!) in highlighting one of my struggles with this type of romance: it’s hard enough to write a solid, fully-fleshed out love story between two characters in the page count of a single book; thusly, it’s almost impossible to do justice to three characters and two love stories within the same number of pages. And here, like in so many other instances, I simply couldn’t become invested in these romances. Sure, they were each attracted to each other. But beyond that? I never felt like any time was given to why these characters were falling for one another, what true connections bound them together other than the fairly rote parallels between Penny’s powers and the fact that one love interest represents Death and the other Life. Beyond that, I personally just don’t enjoy polyamory romances, so this was probably never going to be a great success for me. But for readers who do enjoy these stories, this might still work, though objectively, in this case, I still think the love stories themselves were fairly watered down to simple attraction and not much else.

Overall, I really enjoyed the world-building and magic of this world, but I struggled with the main character and the romances too much to truly enjoy this book. But if you’re a fan of polyamory stories and want to check out an interesting, fresh take on witches and witch burning, this might be a good book for you!

Rating 6: Not to my taste, but it did offer some interesting fantasy concepts that I’d never come across before!

Link will go live on Nov 16 on The Library Ladies blog

TONIGHT, I BURN features witches with a complex magic system, LGBTQ+ rep, and a cast of interesting characters.

The relationships in the book were everything from heartwarming, heartbreaking, and complex.

Fantasy readers will really enjoy this book. It checked off everything I love in a fantasy book: great world building, betrayal, thought out and fully developed characters, and a dash of romance.

thank you to Netgalley and Orbit Books for an eArc in exchange for an honest review.

- "Reading is a faith requiring suspension of belief in a shrine of knowledge and imagination. Stories feed my soul and words are sharper than knives if you know how to wield them— and how to listen."
- The darkest fairytale you’ll read this fall.
- Witches burn at the stake. It’s a fact. But what happens when the cross back over from Death? In ‘Tonight, I Burn’, you just might find out. This book has so many twists and turns, hidden plots, I still haven’t figured it all out. And it’s a trilogy?! Let’s go.
- Magic that involves death, rebirth, crystals, elemental witches, and zombified guards? Okay, so it’s a bit hard to grasp at first. Penny’s been trapped in a castle for years by an evil Warden who just wants to be whole again — and destroy the whole world in the process. Simple, right? Penny burns every night to fulfill a contract with the mystery man -- who refuses to give his identity. Stuck in the contract, she must find a way to do the impossible. And save her coven too.
- Death’s a real place, with a mysterious house that has a mind of its own.
- There’s a library that really does have tiny creatures to eat you if you get too far into the shadows.
- When does book two come out again? 10/10. This might be the best YA witchy series of the year.

Thank you NetGalley and Orbit Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Tonight, I Burn is a fast reading fantasy with an interesting magic system and a lot of promise that ultimately fell flat for me.

The magic system Adams created here was very neat, if a tad underdeveloped (how are crystals made?? I’m still a little unsure). I liked the feel of the world she created, and I thought her take on death magic/death adjacent magic was fun. I thought some of the concepts were really interesting, too, like Gilding, the library, and why Penny’s grandmother keeps healing the Warden. I thought it was really neat to see Penny cross over into Death, and I did think that the premise she set up for the story was overall interesting, and I definitely think it’ll be appealing to readers.

Still, I really struggled with the writing in this. I don’t always enjoy first person writing, but I found this one to be kind of frustrating with the combination of info dumps and just… generally young feeling writing. I don’t know why so many exclamation points are used throughout the book, but I found it really distracting. Being in Penny’s head felt like being in the head of a very young person, despite the fact she’s on the verge of turning 21. There were multiple times where I felt I strongly agreed with other characters that she was making poor choices, and I definitely struggled with her because I felt that way throughout the text. A lot of her choices, reasoning, and logic felt too rash and teenage-like to me, and it definitely made it hard to enjoy reading from her perspective. I also didn’t really love the dialogue between characters, which I felt was a little too immature for what I’d been expecting.

I also found that, despite the info dumps, a lot of the world still felt a little underdeveloped to me, and there’s definitely aspects of this world I want to know more about. Some I can understand as being saved for the second book, but others (like how crystals are grown) should’ve been more fleshed out. I also thought that the romance in this was interesting and had a lot of potential, and I was excited about the poly relationship, but it also missed the mark for me—I didn’t really feel like anything had developed, and so I am unsure how we got from point A to point B.

Overall, I had really hoped to like this book and I think there are some genuinely interesting things here, but I really did not gel well with the actual writing style/prose at all, which made this a difficult read despite it reading quite quickly. I do think there’s an audience who will love this, and I think if it interests you it’s worth a shot, but definitely not one for me.

Penny is a thorn witch, a member of the coven tasked with burning one witch nightly to cross the veil to death, ensure it is patent and then to return to life. When her sister Ella burns but does not return, Penny is directed by Alice, the seer, to be burned before her set date to try retrieve her. When in death, Penny sees a manor, is attracted to it and meets Malian, who has her sister. Penny brings her home, but is contracted to return to Malin nightly for 30 days. How can she accomplish this forbidden task? Who is Malin and what are the answers to all his secrets? How can the thorn witches and the witches in the other covens defeat the Warden who controls them and return from a dreary life of captivity to a life of freedom?

I really enjoyed this unusual witch tale. It kept me guessing, incorporated mystery, romance and adventure, and was just a good read! I couldn’t help but root for the characters and enjoyed the writing style. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

3.5 stars

Tonight, I Burn is the first book in a new trilogy featuring Penny, a thorn witch, whose coven needs to walk in death to maintain the barrier between life and death. The world features multiple covens of witches that are made to serve the powerful Warden who rules with the help of his rather terrifying Gilded enforcers.

There was a lot to like about this book. Penny was an interesting character to follow. Not every choice she made was smart, and there were consequences for choices she made. I enjoyed the world building and seeing some of the friendships that developed. The backstory behind why the Warden rules is fascinating and is slowly unveiled throughout much of the book. While the plot starts off relatively slow for the first approximately one third. It quickly picks up pace. The last third is fast paced with page-turning action.

The romantic thread to the story felt less well developed. For the depth of feeling written, I wish the relationship development hadn't felt mostly off page. I struggled to understand why feelings grew outside of physical attraction. The other part of the story that led me to decrease my rating is difficult to clearly state without spoilers; however, to keep it vague - some of the stakes ended up feeling less high than they should have because of how resolutions presented themselves. There were certainly a lot of really high intensity moments, and I wish more focus and time had been spent on a few rather than the rush of action and highs and lows in the last third.

I wanted to like this book, but there were just some things made it rather flat for me. 🙁

While the premise sounded great, I thought the world building was rather confusing at times. At times I thought it made sense, and then an info dump would happen, and I’d be lost all over again. While I’m good with info dumping here and there, this just felt like random snippets that felt rather out of place to me. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Penny as a MC was sometimes frustrating. She made some really confusing choices and then was praised for being brave when I agreed with her sister, Ella, that she was being rather dumb. That and she just felt so desperate to prove herself that this probably drove her to do these things. 🤨

Her love interests were also rather odd. For both, I felt like the attraction was there, but no growth to show how they came to love each other. It just happened suddenly and that kind of irked me not to see them fall for each other. I wanted that bisexual polyamory relationship to work out, but it just fell flat for me. 😬

But I will say that what redeemed the book for me in a way was the intricate magic system. I found the covens fascinating and the use of absolutely morally grey characters within the coven hierarchy and the Warden incredibly well crafted, but I wish we could’ve gotten a little more information as to how thorn witches came to have their name and how their relationship with death has evolved over time. 🥀

In the end, I was just left with a rather “meh” feeling when I really wanted to like it. The ending was definitely worth pushing through to the end, but I can see why some people might like this book; sadly for me, it just didn’t click. 😢

Thank you to Orbit and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Overall: 3/5 ⭐️

If you love a great witchy read, you'll need to add this first book in a series to your reading list! Out of five covens one coven must chose a withc every night to burn at the stakes, and draw on their powers to come back. This ritual MUST be performed. Lies are kept and chaos lets loosing as one witch breaks tradition.

Fantastic read! Very much looking forward to more works by this author. I enjoyed the unique world-building and magic that was new and different.