The book was meta in the best way. Rae was a main character easy to cheer for, even as a villain. Once she is inside the book she realizes a slight hitch in her plan… she doesn’t remember the books as well as she thought. She assembles a band of villains to help her and the journey is chaotic to say the least. I had a favorite character as soon as they stepped on the page.
Definitely recommend this one for someone who wanted to be thrown in a choose your own adventure book or is in their villain era. I cannot wait for more in this series.

Thank you to Orbit Books for my review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

The short of it: I laughed. I cried. I melted. I was overwhelmed with anxiety for these characters as events unfolded.

Long Live Evil starts out as a ridiculously well-done satire, with the main character stepping into her favorite book and pointing out every well-loved (and maybe over-done) trope and plot line classic to the genre. And it's good. It feels real and relatable and the characters, while even being *characters* and not people to Rae, have so much depth and personality. And then everything just grown more intense and more real and everyone gets more layers and ... Just read it. If you like fantasy, if you like angst, if you like romance and villains and the kind of love that will burn down worlds. Read it. I'm chomping at the bit for more of whatever was in this.

Long Live Evil has a fun premise. A young woman has the chance to step foot into her favourite fantasy series—-only to realize she’s the villain.

I think the author does well keeping the tone of the book fun. It’s a romp but it does read a little disorganized.

I think this book is a great place to start if you’re ready to move on from YA fantasy. It just felt a little juvenile to me.

I went into this book based on a recommendation from another author who gives some of my favorite recommendations and once again she did not disappoint. The concept and execution of this book was so fun and not something that I typically read. I really appreciate all the morally grey characters and how often they had me cackling out loud as I was reading. I am already queueing it up to be read again so I can laugh some more. This is definitely more of a comedy with fantasy elements but I went in expecting that.

I got this as an ARC from Netgalley.

This was incredible and definitely one of my top reads of the year. It's deliciously campy and self-indulgent with a surprising amount of heart and Moira Quirk’s stellar audiobook performance makes it even better

Rae is dying when she’s offered the opportunity to save herself by stepping into the world of her favorite fantasy book series, only to find herself the condemned villain. Hijinks ensue. If only she remembered the plot better… but surely she remembers the important bits, right? Only, what is she to do when she keeps changing the story by accident and the things she clings to as indisputable truths somehow… aren’t?

With a cast of seemingly one-dimensional characters that keep on surprising you with hidden depths and delightful quirks and a plot so bad and cliched it somehow stumbles it’s way into being good. And that, of course, is the point.

Evil wins in this one. Or does it? At least it has cool sunglasses and a secret handshake that involves undulating one’s hand like a serpent.

I was delighted to discover (when I got to the ending and was like what? That cannot be the end!?) that this will be a series and I can look forward to more secretly good evil hijinks. I will be reading the next one as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Moira Quirk's narration is fabulous. The characters all have distinctive and memorable voices that suit their personalities. She does a fantastic job with the sarcasm and humor throughout and absolutely brings the book to life.

*Thanks to Orbit and Hachette Audio for providing an early copy for review.

Was this a perfect book? No. But I loved it I loved every bit of it and it almost felt like it was written for me. I've been in a reading slump for almost 2 months and Long Live Evil just broke me out of it.

I was not sure what I fully expected out of this book, but man did it deliver and surprise me. I have always loved a well written villain and not only did this book deliver great villains it delivered them with twists and aplomb.

Thank you to Orbit and Net Galler for the ARC. This was a book I had highly anticipated and I was so happy to get an ARC. Even if I finished it on release week.

Full of clever wit, wicked charm, and villainous intrigue, Long Live Evil is the perfect combination of fantasy, nostalgia, and humor.

Growing up, Rae and her sister bonded over their favorite fantasy series, Time of Iron, where heroes and villains battle for power and love. But when Rae’s life unexpectedly turns upside down, she finds she’s given a second chance, dropped into the pages of her favorite books, and instead of being the hero’s great love, she’s the villain.

This premise made me instantly think of one of my favorite stories, The Princess Bride—where the tale being told seems to come to life off of the pages of the book. But in this novel, the story very much becomes Rae’s reality, and suddenly waking up to be a character in your favorite fantasy series was a concept I thought was incredibly brilliant and clever.

Rae’s dialogue and insanely quick-witted banter had me chuckling and laughing so much! I loved her sense of humor and her attitude adopting the villainous aesthetic. I also found myself completely sinking into the story and following along eagerly with her as she interacted with each of the characters and placed them within her memory of the events of the books.

This was such a cool, fun twist to a fantasy novel, and I love it when a book surprises you in the best way!

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.*

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I got it as an ARC and it was one of the ones I was most enjoyed about, so I do think my hype set me up a little for disappointment.

As an avid lover of the isekai/transmigration genre, I think that plot point wasn’t quite enough to hook me on my own. I love the idea of someone having to play along as a villain (I’ve read it time and time again) but I think the level of jokiness taken was a bit too far. I think the emotional beats could have brought out more at least.

I did enjoy many of the character moments, and overall had a fun time with this book. It felt a little messy, and I wish it got into the emotions of the characters more, rather than just resting on the novelty of the plot to carry it alone. But I’ll gladly read the sequel.

This is SUCH a fun read. A story where the protagonist finds herself not as the hero, but the villain is a great twist on a fairytale or fantasy story. I loved the wit and humor throughout the story, as well as some very profound quotes about what it means to live and the stories we relate to.

This was such an entertaining read! When you know you are in a story and have the power to be a villain, why? It is very meta at times and super campy. But I love the use of that to make a commentary on fantasy storytelling and sexist tropes. The plot is a bit of a mess at times, but it feels like it happens that way due to Rae’s confusion over actually story events versus what is now happening in this portal fantasy world that she has ended up in and how the events are not aligning anymore.

The thing that shines through in the entire book is the humor. I love when the characters can make jokes that the readers get, but sneak past the other characters due to not really knowing what is being referenced. How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying also was able to play with this type of humor as in both stories the MCs come from our world.

Thank you to @orbitbooks_us and @netgalley for the eARC and to @libro.fm for the ALC. All thoughts are my own.

I love the trend of main characters being bad guys this year! It's about time all those dramatic, brooding villains stepped into the limelight. Long Live Evil definitely satisfies a number of fun villainous tropes and even manages to satisfyingly twist some of these.

Long Live Evil follows Rae, a 20 year old on the brink of death after a years long battle with cancer. She's just had a fight with her dear younger sister over something silly - the book series they both love. As Rae falls asleep that night, a woman appears and tells her she can go into the world of her favorite book and pick a flower that will heal her. But she only has one chance and when Rae appears as Rahela, the Beauty Dipped in Blood, she has to think fast because it's the night before her execution. Now Rae has to win over her guard, Key, and ladies maid, Emer, so she can formulate a plan to live AND get to the magical flower on time.

While I found this tough to immerse myself in at first, by the halfway point I was pretty invested in the characters and plot. Rae isn't the only person on the brink of death to be magicked into this story and it seems each time the tale is altered in unpredictable ways. Rae herself is letting loose a bit after years of being on death’s doorstep and is enjoying her new deadly-as-sin body and her good health. She's a tough character and I could appreciate her ‘fuck ‘em all’ attitude, but she does mellow this a bit and starts thinking more strategically. She's got a flower to pick and a sister to return to after all. 

While Rae may be the star of the show, the side characters are quite memorable as well! Key is a murderous sociopath who latches on to Rahela and practically worships her after a few shows of kindness and understanding. There’s a mysterious figure known as The Cobra who deals in information and brothels and boy, does this guy have a lot to unpack. There’s Marius, a man who’s laid down his blade to prevent his family’s violent curse from overtaking him. And of course, there’s the beautiful heroine of the story, Lia. Lia is Rahela’s sister and she’s out for her own vengeance thanks to Rahela’s devilish machinations to keep the King’s attention for her own. This is truly a vibrant cast of characters and I enjoyed learning more about them and watching how their stories twisted and changed throughout the book.

Overall, this was an entertaining story but fair warning, the cancer, treatments, and even the emotional toll for both patient and family aren't glossed over or prettied up. The beginning was honestly pretty tough to read, especially after having watched someone close go through that. This is a short though very impactful section and I think it sets Rae's characterization up well for the following action and this book seems to have been cathartic for the author to write, as she recently went through that. I was a little surprised to find that Long Live Evil is the first in a series and I'll definitely be picking up the next one!

3/5
The pacing was a little bit odd but the book was engaging when I understood what was going on. I did like the characters though, I just wish there was more development instead of their personalities just being thrown at you.

Oh my goodness, this was SUCH a good book, easily one of my favorites this year!

Rae has terminal cancer; the chemo isn’t helping, and she knows she’s getting worse. But then a mysterious woman shows up in her hospital room, and offers her a solution - go live in the world of her favorite fantasy series, and if she can acquire the Flower of Life and Death, which only blooms once a year, then she’ll be healed in the real world. There’s only one problem - when she wakes up in Eyam, she discovers she’s Rahela - the sultry villainess who’s to be sentenced to a terrible death the very next day.

Rae decides to fully embrace her villainy, and hilarity ensues. Clearly Rae has to survive in order to get the flower - but her very continued existence changes the story (not always for the better) and she spends most of the book trying to fix things (and, half the time, making things worse).

I loved every single thing about this story - the characters are excellent, the world is fascinating, and the writing is exquisitely and hilarious. Many scenes had me laughing out loud (I *need* someone to make a music video of that ball scene), and the way she inserted modern day characters and their culture into the fantasy world is just oh so good.

The ending is abrupt, and I was a little disappointed about all the loose ends, until I discovered there might be at least two more books in the series?! And now I’m just excited to see what evil the author gets us into next!

“Don’t you dream of the forbidden? Choose wrong. Choose evil. Let’s do it together.”

I so wanted to love this but it just fell super flat to me. The concept is so fun and unique. Rae is fighting cancer and gets trapped in her favorite fantasy novel with an opportunity to save herself with a magical bargain. The catch? She enters the novel as the villain. Don’t we all love a good villain??

The first 20% felt a bit silly to me. It very much feels like a parody of a fantasy novel and the pacing was fast. After that, the pacing did even out briefly and we got some more explanation which I was waiting and hoping for. The pacing really slowed down for the second half of the novel. Sometimes I found it a bit confusing; even though it’s written in 3rd person, the perspective (I think??) changes between some chapters so you have to reorient yourself. I really could not find myself caring about the characters or storyline in the slightest. It all feels very surface level. There’s a lot of action, but the way it’s written just feels anti-climactic. This took me over a month to finish and I didn’t want to pick it up. Probably would have DNF’d had it not been an ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit Books for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Content warnings: violence, murder, blood, injury/injury detail, cancer, medical content, war

Thank you to NetGalley Orbit books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Long Live Evil is hilarious, bratty, and unabashedly itself. Rooting for the villains has never been this fun!

Rae is a long-term cancer patient on the verge of death. Rahela is one of the main characters in Time of Iron, the fantasy series Rae’s sister loves to read out loud at Rae’s bedside. When a mysterious stranger offers a dying Rae the chance to enter the world of Time of Iron, become Rahela, and find a way to survive for a second chance at life, of course she takes it.
Before she knows it, she’s been immersed in a world she’s only half paid attention to, and as the series’s Villain, she’s scheduled to be executed the next day!

Will Rae be able to take her - and the villainess’s fate- into her own hands? Will evil win at last?

I had a lot of fun reading this! Rae is snarky, witty, and throws caution to the wind more often than not. I will say that at times it was hard to follow the plot of the fantasy story she was in, but it never felt boring. Other characters like the Cobra and Key were additional gems to the story.

I did not realize this was book one in a series, but I can’t wait to see where the next book takes us! Highly recommend for a good time.

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan was such a fantastically fun read! I enjoyed my time reading this and thought it was marvelously entertaining. I couldn't put it down and wanted to keep reading it. The writing was entertaining, funny and engaging. The character development was amazing. Overall, I thought this was great! I will recommend this to everyone!

When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series.

Y’all this book was everything I wanted and more. I found myself giggling, flipping through pages at a maddening speed and gasping with shock at THAT certain scene. And to have the narrator reading it to me as well, it was absolute perfection.
To be able to read and listen to this book is such an honor.
They couldn’t have chosen a better narrator to bring Rae’s story to life. The fear, the anger, the sarcasm and the flirting was perfection.
I couldn’t praise this book enough for being unique, engaging, heart wrenching, causing sides hurting from laughter and leaving a long last impression after turning the last page.
I highly recommend this book to everyone looking for a breath of fresh air in the crowded book market.
5 ⭐️ and favorite read of the year
I just wanna thank NetGalley for an Audio and eARC of this book. You guys are the best. My review is a honest reflection of my feelings towards this book.

I will read anything that Sarah Rees Brennan writes forever. Anytime she does an original work, I fall madly in love, and this was no different!

Honestly, I was really looking forward to this book. However, I had a hard time connecting with the writing and main character off the bat. So much so that I felt I forced myself through the first third and then had to switch over to audio to finish. The endi no definitely made up for the beginning! It felt not edited well. There were jumps in the plot and dialogue that left me confused and having to back track to figure out what I had missed. I also felt that the writing tried too hard to make the MFC a villain.

That being said, I felt the plot got better and I fell more in love with the side characters! The narration was done very well and kept me interested enough where I felt the writing didn’t. The ending definitely surprised me and may have even convinced me to pick up book two! Although it felt much too long and drawn out for book one in a series.

A brilliant concept for any fantasy lover: Rae is sick and left with little hope of recovery when a mystery figure appears with an even more mystifying offer – leave her fate up to the doctors overseeing her care or be transported into her favorite book series and take a chance on the magical cure that can be found there. It’s a pretty easy choice; magic book it is. But when Rae wakes up in a world she’s only read about, two things are true: 1) she is now in the body of the tale’s villain and 2) she may not know as much about this realm as she thought.

This book was fun fun fun with surprising emotion, out-of-pocket twists, and characters I couldn’t help but root for – after an initial info dump that, admittedly, did overwhelm me for a hot sec. But as soon as I understood the stakes and the story as Rae knew it to be, that knowledge served to showcase exactly how the story goes wrong once she enters it. Brilliant. Exciting. Crazy, honestly.

To avoid saying too much, I will say that you have to go into this story with an open mind. It’s a modern-day girl with contemporary mannerisms and pop culture references galore landing in a high fantasy world where women are supposed to be prim and proper and chaperoned. It’s jarring until it isn’t, and we’re figuring out this world right along with Rae as she plays the villain but finds herself within some heroic moments. We get a few additional perspectives from other characters, which was a surprise but not an unwelcome one, as the story quickly grows much bigger than just Rae’s mission.

The twists EAT. (At the risk of my millennial self misusing that word, I can’t think of another way to put it.) The first big one had my jaw drop and made me run screaming to my partner in shock. The finale twist was hinting at but did not turn out at all in the way that I expected and was both a joy and a horror and that cliffhanger ending has me waiting with bated breath for the second book.

All in all, it won’t be for everyone, it was definitely for me, and I think anyone could enjoy it they just go along for the ride.

Content warnings: death, gore, discussions of cancer and serious illness.