Oh how I love this series! Margaret Owen had so much pressure to deliver the ending and she did an amazing job! I loved being back with Vanja and Emeric and seeing how their story played out. In the finale, we get many callbacks to what happened in prior books as well as new characters I grew to love. Junior, I'm looking at you. I felt very satisfied with the ending after everything these characters have been through. It is hard to review this one without spoilers but just know this series is worth your while!

This was a disappointing finale to the series, I really hated the direction the author went with the romance; it ruined the book for me. Emeric treated Vanya so terribly, I hated him. I thought the idea of a “divorce” book could have been cool but unfortunately it spoiled everything I liked about the romance,

You’ve seen it before: The hero drops his voice into its lowest register, so you know he means business. I never want to see you again. The love interest’s eyes fill up with tears. Is this real? Why are you doing this? Beneath his stony façade, he’s heartbroken too, but there’s no help for it. For her own safety, he has to nobly deny his own happiness, and hers, and go off into the night, a lone wolf once more. If not, what of his enemies? Etc.

I have seen this scenario play out, conservatively, one trillion times without anyone asking any follow-up questions like “Doesn’t Doc Ock already know he cares about MJ, though?” or “Why does she think this will solve her problems?” My private trope rule is that the required level of in-universe plausibility for deploying a given trope stands in direct proportion to the plot significance the trope is being asked to bear. If there’s only one bed for a couple of chapters or a single TV episode, I don’t need a ton of groundwork from the writers on that. If the characters are enemies who then become lovers, and that’s the whole arc of the book, then I am going to need some solid basis for their starting enmity, and I will then need it to be resoundingly overcome. Put in the litcrit language of Tumblr nerds, I need the load-bearing tropes to have a rock-solid Watsonian grounding.

The formulation of Watsonian vs Doylist explanations distinguishes between in-universe and extra-textual reasons why certain things happen in a story. The Watsonian explanation draws only on in-universe context: Spider-man has trauma from what happened to Gwen Stacy, so it makes sense that he would try to protect MJ by breaking up with her even though they are in love. (This doesn’t help us explain what Tobey Maguire’s problem is, but I do not have time just now to get into all the various Spider-mans and my feelings about Gwen Stacy.) The Doylist explanation acknowledges the motives and intentions of the writers: If the hero’s relationship is all sunshine and roses in between supervillain attacks, a narrative avenue is foreclosed. If he gets together with his girlfriend once, and then he breaks her heart to save her, that means the writers, and the readers, have the fun of getting them together a second time.

It is fun. I do like it. But I’m damned if I can think of a romance trope that’s gone so thoroughly un-deconstructed.

For whatever reason, authors count so much on readers recognizing and enjoying this trope in SFF romances that they don’t bother coming up with a plausible Watsonian reason for its inclusion. It’s just what happens when a certain brand of SFF protagonist has a romance that stretches over more than one movie/book/season. I want writers to ground this sequence of events in character and relationship, but it’s maddeningly rare for them to actually do it. The audience is asked to take it as read that the heartbreaker is acting in their partner’s best interests, and that the heartbreakee eventually comes to understand this, doesn’t mind too much, and is prepared to move the relationship forward as soon as the heartbreaker stops actively trying to break their heart. Until this literal year, nobody, not once not ever, has bothered putting in the work to convince me that any part of this sequence of events made plot or emotional sense.

This year brought us Margaret Owen’s Holy Terrors. It’s the third in a trilogy about an angry, selfish girl named Vanja who made it through a lifetime of neglect and abuse with a crop of emotional and physical scars, a talent for picking pockets, the favor of the gods (sometimes), and a healthy hostility for rich people. Against both their better judgment, she falls in love with prefect Emeric Conrad, whom she variously describes as a “human civics primer,” an “accounting ledger made flesh,” and an “intolerable filing cabinet.”

(Here the author of this piece has been compelled to delete a ten thousand–word manifesto about the greatness of the Little Thieves series. If you like the TV show Leverage, or you enjoy digging your teeth into solid character development, or you just hate rich people, you should read it. The first book is Little Thieves. Thank me later.)

At the end of the second book, Painted Devils, Vanja leaves Emeric for his own good, on the principle that their enemies will use her against him if they’re together. She’s really cruel about it, to make sure it sticks. She takes off with the Wild Hunt and intends never to see him again. Then you will never guess what happens in Holy Terrors. Yes! She sees him again! Now he’s engaged! And you know what, I talked a big game earlier about my expectations for load-bearing tropes and what the authors owed me, but I have to be honest right now and admit that Margaret Owen had me for cheap. I didn’t need her to unpack one single thing. I love these characters. I had been waiting several years. Emeric shows up engaged, and I’m like, yes, good, great, I accept. Vanja left him for his own good. Now he is engaged to someone else, and they have to stop a magical serial killer together. Daiyenu.

But these books are operating on a different, better level, and a good chunk of Holy Terrors is dedicated to unpacking what Vanja did and why she did it. Margaret Owen does with the trope what you’re supposed to do with tropes: She uses it to tell us more about these two characters and how they relate to each other and what that means for their future. Vanja’s starting point, at the end of Painted Devils, was her certainty that she would always be a weapon someone would use against Emeric. (What of his enemies?) No matter how often he promised her it wouldn’t happen that way, she knew he’d eventually be forced to choose between his life’s work and his relationship with her. So she leaves. She breaks his heart, to save him.

Or… Is that what she does? Is that why she does it?

In a book about the many lives we could have lived, Owen produces a world of possible answers to those questions. The deepest, most painful reason for why Vanja did what she did is that she can’t believe she’s good enough for Emeric. When she thinks about staying with him, she remembers how her mother—who abandoned her when Vanja was four years old—used to say of her, “Whatever she touches falls to ruin.”

Each section of the book begins with a story about a choice Vanja could have made differently, and what her life would have looked like, then. It’s a hint at the story the book is telling. In one version of her life, Vanja goes straight and wonders if that has made her “worthy of a prefect.” In another, she and Emeric stay with each other, but it comes—as Vanja always feared—at the price of Emeric’s professional success. A voice in her head asks her, “How could someone like you ever be anything but a burden?”

At one point in the main narrative, a bruised and angry Emeric tells Vanja coldly that he knows why she left. “You needed to do to me what your mother did to you,” he says. “You needed to understand her, so you repeated her actions. You were trying to find answers by abandoning me.” It’s not the story Vanja’s been telling herself, the story of choosing to give up her happiness to protect the possibility of Emeric’s, but it’s not a million miles off the truth, either. Owen’s been showing us all along that Vanja’s relationship with her mother left behind fault lines that Vanja has had to learn how to live with. When a friend asks her if she still believes what her mother told her, that she could only bring harm to Emeric, Vanja says with all the honesty she can muster, “I’m trying not to, these days.”

This—the recognition that the heartbreaker is operating from a place of internal damage, rather than rational good sense—is already ten thousand times more interesting than any other version of breaking someone’s heart to save them than I’ve ever encountered in my life before. But Margaret Owen’s not done. In one confrontation, Vanja finally manages to articulate what Emeric was contributing to their dynamic. When they were together, before she left him, when she tried to point out problems to him, or voice her uncertainties, he hastened to insist the problems didn’t exist and he had solutions for her uncertainties. Without ever intending to, he made her believe that the only version of her he could love would be one that fit neatly into his life, the life of a prefect. “You saw someone you wanted to see in me,” Vanja tells him. “Not someone I ever could have been.”

So yeah: there was more to it than breaking his heart to save him. She messed up. He messed up. The thing is, though, none of that is the real problem, just the substrate for the real problem. The rupture in Vanja’s relationship with Emeric still matters, is still a thing to be repaired; but the truth she arrives at, ultimately, is that she couldn’t be with Emeric until she grew into a person who could be with Emeric. If this sounds like a tautology, it’s the tautology that underlines the romance genre. The best romances are stories of becoming. Romance protagonists don’t just happen to meet the loves of their lives. They have to become the self that can receive the love that will carry them into their happily ever after. I didn’t realize how much I was craving a proper Watsonian explication of the break-his-heart-to-save-him trope until Margaret Owen came along. She took the trope by the scruff of its neck, put it through its paces, and shook like seventeen different emotional truths out of it. I complained recently about romantasy’s tendency to reproduce tropes without bothering too much about them, and Holy Terrors is the glorious antithesis to that trend. This is tropes done right, the absolute acme of playing with tropes in SFF romance. Margaret Owen’s setting the bar that I’ll now always be asking the genre to meet.

Thanks to Macmillan Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC.

😭😭😭
OMG.........Margaret has left me in tears and why is it over?? I am so, so, so glad a friend told me I needed to read this series because it has been one of the best I've read over the last couple of years. I am not going to get into specifics for spoilery reasons, but honestly how can you even unpack all that is in this story anyway!! This tale definitely went unexpected places to wrap up the wonderful story of Vanya and Emeric, Gisele and Ragna and all the fantastic side characters that inhabit this wonderful world. It's an action-packed whirlwind of murders, conspiracies and finding the path to accepting the love that you are given. Margaret really knows how to hit you in the feels and there are some moments of devastation and definitely moments of redemption. Loved every minute of it. I listened to the audio and as usual Saskia does a marvelous narration. If you have at all considered reading this series but not yet dived in...........what the heck are you waiting for, get to it!!!

Forever grateful i got to read this last installment in the trilogy! 🥰
Vanja and Emeric has a special place in my heart and I loved how they became a somewhat responsible new adults. With chaos and more unhinged plot development of course.
I screamed, cried and laughed my way through the whole book and so glad I pushed through my heartbreak, because the end was chefs kiss!

This series was GOOD. This book did a great job tying it so together and clearing up all the loose ends. It wasn’t a series I’d shout to the rooftops over, but that’s mostly because the language/ names are tricky and there are so many people it can be tough to follow. But still kept my attention and was overall a good read.

I received an advance review copy for free from the publisher via Netgalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Loved this addition to the series! Since book one, this story has felt like a modern fairy tale and I love it!

This book is messy, a bit too long, and somewhat hard to get through. However, three books into the series, it feels true to the nature of these characters and their journey that, while the plot is convoluted and the decisions don’t always make sense, they are able to overcome their trials, their differences, and their hangups to have their happy endings.

Thank you to NetGalley, Margaret Owen, and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I have loved this series dearly since I received the first book as an audio arc for the first book. This book was a great finale and I'm looking forward to any and everything else that Margaret decides to write.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

When I read "Painted Devils," the prequel to the trilogy-ending "Holy Terrors," my review contained these lines:

"This is one of the best books I have ever read. I've read thousands - literally *thousands* - of books, and this book (and its sequel, "Little Thieves") has earned a venerated place in my top 10.

10 stars. 100 stars. I don't believe in magic, but if I DID, Margaret Owen certainly possess some form of it."

---------------------------------

"Holy Terrors" was THE book for me. The one I was looking forward to most this year. Perhaps ever. The emotion I felt when I was approved for the e-arc was nothing to the emotion I felt upon finishing this absolute masterpiece. Margaret Own is a GODDESS. A fiend. A *holy terror*, if you will. I can say nothing that hasn't already been said, but if your eyes consume no other works this year, let them consume this. A masterpiece on all fronts and, truly, one of the most magnificent series I have ever read in my life.

This book has been haunting me from my Kindle because I was not ready to admit this series was over. But I am so glad I finally picked it up because it's just SO GOOD. Vanja is sassy and smart as always, and she grows more and more every book. I want to go back through these books and highlight every silly way she describes Emeric. Now I am not usually a fan of a story that throws a whole extra plot into the last third of a book but somehow it really works in this one! These books have plot twists and twists of the knife in equal measure. Margaret Owens, you have a lifelong fan. Drink this book: Enjoy with a bright Gamay from anywhere.

2.5 stars!!!

Unfortunately, this series really went downhill for me. I didn't like the romance and this book really focused on it. The love interest just gave me the ick the whole time, which could've absolutely been a me thing, so every time they interacted I was cringing, hoping things wouldn't move on. I do fully believe that if this book had come out 5 years ago I would have eaten it up and loved every second of it! My reading taste, especially with fantasy, has changed so much since I started this series and that definitely affected my enjoyment/rating. It's hard to go into detail with why I didn't love this book without going into spoilers so I'll just leave it at that. There is a market out there for people who will LOVE this book, I'm just not a part of it.

Just finished Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen and I’m a wreck in the best way. This book is everything—funny, dark, heartfelt, and so smart. Vanja’s final journey is full of cursed magic, haunted forests, and emotional gut punches. The character growth? Top tier. The found family vibes? Immaculate. A pitch-perfect end to one of the most unique and clever trilogies I’ve read. If you liked Little Thieves, this is the closure you didn’t know you needed.

"I am my best with you."

It's always hard saying goodbye to a beloved series. I love this trilogy with every bit of my soul. Vanja and Emeric hold a permanent place in my heart. Holy Terrors was bittersweet and perfect and I could not ask for a more fitting end to Vanja's story.

The only thing that would have made this read more perfect is if I reread the first two. I had a hard time keeping up with the what's what and who's who. I should've kept notes. All in all, Holy Terrors exceeded all my expectations and more.

Fucking amazing. I shouldn't have worried. Full review to come once I stop these happy tears.

Full Review:
Holy Terrors is the kind of finale that makes me believe in trilogies again. After reading several “meh” endings lately, this book gave me hope; and emotional devastation in the best way. And I get it - endings are HARD. But this was just so satisfying.

Margaret Owen leans hard into what made this series great: the characters. She doesn’t abandon the emotional arcs in favor of story and plot only. Instead, she doubles down on the messiness, the growth, and the heartbreak of Vanja and Emeric. Their evolution here? Amazing. I am in awe of how much they’ve grown and how earned it all feels. I would die for these two characters.

The plot wasn’t perfect. I didn’t always care about the politics. But I was never here for that; I was here for THEM, and even if it wasn’t flawless, it was everything I needed. Yes, the plot goes a little “timey wimey,” and the number of side characters and royal names is… overwhelming. I couldn’t remember half of them. But honestly? Didn’t care. Because Owen somehow makes me care deeply about even the briefest character interactions. She builds attachment with such precision, and even if I couldn’t keep the names straight all the time, the emotional beats always hit.

This book is everything I wanted from a final book. Messy, heartfelt, and absolutely devoted to its characters. I laughed, I cried, I giggled. I will read anything Owen writes next.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Macmillan for the complimentary copy. This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.

This was a great way to end the trilogy. I have to admit though that my dumb brain did not keep a lot of the names straight when it came to some of the side characters. It was also a little hard to say a lot of their names in my head so I don't think that helped either. I was really sad that Benno ended up actually dying. I was hoping there would be some clause that would bring them all back but I guess not. He was one of the best additions to the book and one of my favorite new characters. The ending of the story itself was unbelievable. They literally broke down time and space to save the day. The angst between Emeric and Vanja nearly killed me though. I kept trying to think up ways that Emeric and Lilije wouldn't end up together in the end and none of it worked out the way I thought it would but the way Own wrote it was even better than what I imagined for the story. I can't wait to read more from this author in the future.

Thank you NetGallery for a free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. To be fair, I had also preordered it a year in advance and read both copies at the same time.

Oh my Goddess, High and Low... This final book was exactly what I needed to complete this trilogy.

Brief summary: It's been roughly two years since the ending of "Painted Devils" (which broke my heart) and Vanja has been using the Pfennigeist to help those who fall through the cracks of Justice. Until one day where she is pursued by the Prefects as a suspect in a murder. This brings her right back to our favorite prefect Emeric... and his fiancée. ((internal screaming)) Together, they have to solve not one, but MULTIPLE murders of members of the royalty while trying to pick a new emperor/empress before the end of the holiday that could lead to the veil between the gods and humanity being broken. Yeah, no pressure.

I love these characters. I do, I cannot lie. These characters feel real to me because there are consequences. The way Vanja left at the end of "Painted Devils" GREATLY effects the Emeric we see now: angry & untrusting while trying to move forward, but having to be thrust back and work with the person that broke his heart. All while also working with his fiancée who has an ability that is beyond bad ass. And the way they all interact is so refreshing. Seeing the struggle and growth in Vanja is amazing. This was a woman torn apart mentally for YEARS and still struggles with those negative voices in her head, but is trying so hard to move forward and select voices from her siblings who are helping her heal, trying to remember not everything is her fault. The physical and mental growth of these characters made me love them even more as the store progressed.

There were things I did not care for, mainly the lack of Vanja's family. I understand it would have been difficult to add scenes with her sisters and brothers, but I missed them after having them be so essential in book 2. There was a scene with Giesle and how she did not want to become empress because of Ragne, but that did not fully develop or make much sense to me

Overall, I absolutely loved this book and trilogy so much. I am sorry to see it end, but am completely satisfied with how it ended. Definitely a series I will be rereading for years.

This series and these characters are everything to me. When I first read Little Thieves shortly after it was released, it quickly became one of my favorite books. The way Margaret Owen story tells with depth and creativity, weaving layers of emotions and whimsical elements, is truly something else. Not only the rollercoaster ride she takes us on with the plot through all 3 books, but the way she writes banter and comedic relief is top tier and one of the many reasons I love this series.

The stakes for this book are the most intense out of the 3, but it’s the character arcs that truly drive the story. From where they all began in book 1, to seeing them grow into their true and unapologetic selves and then grow into a found family. Every single character was so well-rounded and I’m going to miss reading their messy, chaotic adventures.

Vanja and Emeric, my babies 😭 They are so adorable despite their flaws. The sacrifices they continue to make for one another, if a bit miscommunicated (can’t fault them though, they are young adults still learning), are selfless motivations to keep the other thriving despite their contradictory lifestyles. They both are so relatable and up there on my list of favorite characters ever written.

I literally will not shut up about this series until it gets the recognition it deserves, I HIGHLY recommend this to everyone!!

The perfect end to the Little Thieves trilogy, this tied up the series well. I loved reading about Vanja's journey from start to finish, and I can't wait to see what's coming next from Margaret Owen!

*Thank you to Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review*

Full of folklore and political intrigue, we finally close the cover on our Pfennigeist. What a freaking ending. It's slow to start, but soon we're chasing our Vanja through the streets, uncovering malicious plots, and facing demons from our past. It was so nice being back with these characters, though I wish they could've had a few moments of happiness at the beginning before Margaret Owen ripped it away from them.

I definitely felt like the book was a skosh too long and maybe could've done with one less interstitial chapter. But overall, I felt like it wrapped up the series in a befitting way.