The Others was an interesting read! It took a little while to get hooked on the story. Overall, I enjoyed the book!

Thank you to NetGalley & the Publisher for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

I'm a little conflicted what to rate this one. I think ultimately I want to give it 3.5 stars, & am rounding it up to 4.

It started off a bit rocky for me. I really didn't like her writing style, and I didn't like our main character. The FMC just felt really unrealistic and bland. She was every FMC you've ever read in one person, and completely boring as a result. She would make weird, seemingly out of character decisions, but it never felt super out of character because she didn't have enough personality to really say exactly that. It just doesn't read quite right. Like the character feels like a caricature of a character. Not a real person. It feels like what you think a character would be like, not what a person is actually like. No one realistically reacts like Olivia does. I don't know, but she wasn't vibing with me.

A lot of what our FMC was thinking or feeling or doing felt "dumb". Just basically illogical. This made her feel like she was constantly breaking character. She's saying she's "so logical" and refuses to acknowledge her emotions, and then immediately turns around and acts like magic is real and that she's always believed in it, and that it's coming for her. Tell me how that works? Especially based off of what we know about her (seemingly not believing in "the gift" being magic? Or at least that's how I interpreted it). She's 0 to 100 really quick. She went from having realistic business disagreements with the guy to saying that he's basically torturing her mentally? And literally nothing happened except that he texted her a taunting message. Other than that literally nothing has happened with this guy. All this shit had me lost from the start.

To add to this, I kept forgetting we were in first person. I think was due to the huge exposition segments of text in the first 35% or so. I'd finally get back to a part where she speaks, and would immediately be reminded that we were still in first person instead of third. The author chose to explain everything in these giant paragraphs instead of letting the information come naturally or clueing us into anything. I would rather take three to five chapters to experience all of the "weird things" happening with Olivia, instead of just being told about it second hand by her familiar or whatever. Like, why can't we just take a second to do some world building so we don't have all this exposition dump? Things just started happening really fast and for no reason. It felt really random and within sentences apart. Very jarring and confusing.

It works that way between characters too. 0 to 100% friends. 0 to 100% lovers. Etc. Things are just happening around these characters and they're all just acting like it's totally normal or that it's so obvious despite us, the reader, having 0 reason to play along with it.

Ultimately one of the major flaws in this book is the in world logic. I just found myself finding extremely obvious counter arguments to most of the things these characters were saying or concluding. Someone was like, "well okay but you'll never be able to make friends cuz who are you gonna tell about your abilities?" Like huh? She literally has an "Other" friend already, and she knows how to locate/sense them now. Why couldn't she just make new "other" friends?

My initial question, that I don't think was ever truly answered, was why these Others want to help the humans at all in the first place. What's the gain? They could just have the world all to themselves and run it so perfectly they don't have to save anybody right? Why are the humans even integral to the plot? It's just kind of useless. I guess maybe it's because the Others have to live in the aftermath if the humans blow each other up, but still, where was the explanation in book?

**SPOILER**
I knew immediately that Gabe was her dad. You can't make it that obvious - having him making faces and hiding things, etc.
**END SPOILER**

This book was weirdly political. It is very specific to NOW, and she frames characters to outline the characteristics of Trump, and other known Repubs, etc. Which is annoying. I agree with most of her politics in this book, but I hated reading about it. It was presented like "hot takes" and didn't belong. I, like other reviewers, wanted it to be "Others" politics. Not American politics. I found myself completely skipping over these sections.

I did, however, like William and their relationship. The only parts in which I liked Olivia where the parts where she was interacting with William. Their relationship was the sole reason I rounded my review up to 4 stars, instead of rounding down to 3. I'm still confused why he picked her though of all people but I guess we wouldn't have the book without it so, meh. The relationship got stagnant after while because of obvious reasons. No conflict, no drama, so meh again.

The book really likes to date itself with not only the politics, but also its references. There's a section that references Tik Tok explicitly, and TWO different spots that refer to a statement on "X, formerly known as Twitter". I could see saying it once, but twice?

I think at like 75% she finally switches to 3rd person for a bit. It was unstated with no POV switch called out, but it felt super natural like it should have been that way the whole time. It finally felt like it was reading appropriately.

Then it just ends. I don't know, I kept wanting to read it to see where it was going, and Olivia's relationship with William was the main thing keeping me going. I didn't hate it, but I also just kept thinking how illogical some of the most basic things were. The logic was off, the delivery was off, the timing was off, Olivia kinda sucked, and ultimately it was just kinda bleh. I am interested in reading the remaining 2 books but I could also see myself forgetting to circle back.

Since this was a pre-release copy, the paragraphs and spacing between words would sometimes be really off which made it hard to read at times. I am assuming the formatting issues were a result of it being pre-released, but obviously I don't know. It was so bad at times, I think it was intentional just in case of copyright issues, though I've never seen that from any other publishers so not sure.

Overall, 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. We will see if the 2nd book gives this series a little more life!

‘The Others’ by Evette Davis is an urban fantasy, strongly influenced by politics. The story follows the main character Olivia as she becomes aware of her paranormal identify and world around her. I did enjoy that the main character was older, being in her thirties which was refreshing in a fantasy book.

A key theme in this book is American politics. As a reader in Europe I enjoyed this subplot, however it was glaring obvious the authors political views which may upset some readers.

The main reason for giving the book three stars was a lack of world building. As much as it is an urban fantasy and as such can be easily digested it was sometimes difficult to be fully immersed in the world especially in the beginning. I found that the further into the book the more I understood, however the balance between the politics and fantasy aspect sometimes felt conflicting. I almost would have enjoyed it more if there was a heavier focus on one aspect over the other. I enjoyed the politics and the supernatural plots but it felt as though they were separate books.

However, the exert from the next book gives me hope that this book is mainly to establish the world and background and will provide more harmony between the two main plots.

Overall, I’d say if you are a fan of fantasy books such as Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter books, this would be up your street! The characters were enjoyable and the romance was good. It’s mainly dialogue and so a quick and easy read!

“They call it the Gift, but I have never seen it that way”. Olivia tried to reject who she was, but fate has come knocking and thrown her into a parallel world full of witches, vampires and more.
The novel had a sound concept, and as a long-time fantasy fan, the idea of a different world hidden in plain sight is always intriguing.
Olivia is passionate and driven, with strong ideals about how the world should be. I particularly enjoyed reading about her relationship with William; a tall, attractive and mysterious vampire. Despite William being jaded about the world, he is always the perfect challenge for Olivia.
Despite knowing Olivia was a political consultant when starting this book, the heavy amount of politics involved in the plot was surprising. The author made it very clear where she sits in politics, and whilst that isn’t inherently a bad thing, this heavy use of real-world politics brought me out of the novel and disturbed the fun, fantastical elements of the story. I wanted to know more about the Others and the Council, not Republican/Democrat American politics. Maybe we need to wait for more instalments of the series, who knows!
Overall I enjoyed this story and the characters within. I would recommend this book as a fun, easy to follow and light urban fantasy read.

⭐4.5

I loved this book!

I did not expect this to get as real-world political as it did, I know it says Olivia is a political consultant, but I expected it to not be as pointed as it is (not complaining, read the government for filth all you want).

I genuinely hate William, he just feels like a walking red flag. The relationship between Olivia and William felt unsatisfying and I wish better for Olivia.

Relationships aside, I thought the plot of this book was really interesting. A lot of ideas and separate(ish) plot points got to shine through without it feeling like too much is happening. I did call some things from the beginning, but I wasn’t mad about being able to call it.

I look forward to the future books in this series!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this book!
DNF @ 32%
2 stars

I realllly tried to give this book a chance. Mostly just because I feel bad for all the dnf-ing I've been doing for ARCs. But I just could not bring myself to want to keep reading this book. It's just not for me. I found the writing too dialogue-driven, the random jumps in time too missing on information (especially the very start itself), and just sorta bare overall. The summary also did mention politics, so this one is partially on me, but I vastly underestimated how much it meant by politics.

The author very much made her politic stances known in this book, which I'm not saying authors cannot do, but it's not really my preference. I don't really read books because I wanna hear more about American elections/political parties or MAGA. I thought I'd be getting more Other politics, less... us politics xD There was also a route this book was going with it's supernatural council that I didn't love. There's a chance it's setting up for said thing to be wrong, but for now it just feels ick to me and I'll never find out how it was meant to go.

So yeah, overall, this book wasn't for me. Others may enjoy it, though, especially if they're intrigued by the way supernatural creatures involve themselves in politics. There's also a hot southern vampire that plays in a band and challenges the MC. If this stuff sounds interesting to you, maybe look into the book :D

I am always on the lookout for new authors to love even though I really shouldn’t, but my absolute favorite genre (well, one of two) is hard to find these days. This looked right in the sweet spot of genres. I started this and was immediately drawn into the story. I loved Olivia, and how confident she was…well, most of the time. The story was interesting, and I quite enjoyed this book. There was one nit-picky thing, but nothing huge, that sometimes Olivia was a little too dramatic for who she is at her core: cool, calm, and collected. However, that could just be because she was just introduced to a new world. This book is well-written, interesting, and I’m ready to read the next one. Recommend. I was provided a complimentary copy which I voluntarily reviewed.