★★★☆☆
A Dark Descent with Strong Themes but Uneven Execution

Our Vicious Descent has an intriguing premise and a refreshingly raw take on mental health, grief, and queer identity wrapped in a dark fantasy setting. Hayley Dennings isn’t afraid to explore difficult emotions, and the result is often moving and honest.

The book shines in its emotional moments and character introspection. The protagonist’s struggle feels authentic, and the representation is handled with care. However, the pacing can be inconsistent, and the worldbuilding—while atmospheric—sometimes lacks clarity or depth. Certain plot elements felt underdeveloped, and secondary characters could have used more complexity.

Overall, it’s a compelling read with heart, even if the journey is a bit uneven. Recommended for readers who appreciate emotionally charged fantasy with a focus on internal battles as much as external ones.

nfortunately, after having high hopes for this duology after the first book, I was pretty disappointed in this conclusion. The sweet and steamy sapphic moments were few and far between chapters full of telling background to things that came off as very clunky and dense to read. There didn’t seem to be enough dialogue between the characters and the big moments were told in a way that came off as monotone and didn’t seem to really show the scene in an evocative way to me. I do think this could have benefited from some italics throughout the story to help with overall tone diction as well. Overall, I enjoyed some moments and Josie’s storyline could be super cool and creepy in a movie, but I found this installment quite difficult to read through.

Tragic and beautiful. Elise and Layla’s romance is so sad! I loved it. The ending had me crying. It was so beautiful.

Our Vicious Descent is perfect for readers who crave a finale that plunges a poignantly star-crossed queer couple into a morally tangled underworld crisis, forcing them to choose between personal loyalty and the greater good while confronting the price of power in a lavish, danger-soaked Jazz Age setting.

I really wanted to love this book. There were parts I definitely did enjoy, I think the relationship dynamic between the main characters was phenomenal, and I think that made up for the plot.

The storyline was fine the beginning, approaching confusing and hard to follow towards the middle, and by the end I was skimming through trying to finish because I could not find it in me to care what happened. I found things getting annoyingly repetitive and none of what the characters did really made sense to me.

I think the romance pulled most of the weight in this book. It’s one of my favourite tropes, childhood best friends-to enemies-to lovers, and it was done beautifully. The way Hayley Dennings writes and expresses their love was gorgeous and their ending had me sobbing and staring at the wall for hours. However, I was right where I wanted to be because I love when a book makes me really feel for the characters, which is exactly what happened with Layla and Elise.

As a black girl with OCD, I felt seen while reading this since it’s so uncommon to see it in books, which I greatly appreciated.

Overall, I was a little disappointed in this book, especially since I absolutely adored the first one, but I still think it’s a conclusion worth reading.

The highly anticipated sequel to Our Ravenous Fate was a bit of a disappointment. The writing felt a little bit all over the place and the a lot of things were happening that just didn't make sense, in my opinion,

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a hard one for me, it kind of follows the same path as the first book. There are multiple POV's, it started off slow and then went 0 to 60. I thought it wrapped up beautifully but I can't put it over the first.

I give this book a solid 4 star rating. It was kind of slow for my taste, but when it picked up it PICKED UP. Overall I enjoyed reading this, although it reminded me a little too much of another book I've read from years before. It wasnt a bad thing, and I did like the flare the author gave it. It was nice seeing the two main characters give in to their deepest selves and accept each other as more. The side characters were so fun in this book too! My favorite bring Hendricks. I love a good "bringing different people together" trope. Works everytime!!! The ending though had me sad and angry and heartbroken like the ending of supernatural did. And I would definitely recommend others to read this, especially if they've already read the first book!

I loved the first book, This Ravenous Fate, featuring Elise and Layla who are a daughter of a gangster and reaper. Now Elise and Layla must confront the evilest being and it has unlikely alliances in order to survive. I loved the pace with this book because we now know the problems that are in Harlem during the 1920s, and the players. Elise and Layla are absolutely put to the test in this one, once again, and I won't lie, I was left in tears over the conclusion. I highly recommend this duology!

I had so many emptions about his book. I loved that Elise and Layla could be in love with each other and be together but the world would not let them be. Elise was still seeking her sister Josi, there's a new monster on the loose and there's so much going on around them that I wished that they could just get a second to just relax and just be two young people in love. There's a new mystery, a hunt for a missing sister and so much blood.

I was very excited to get to read the conclusion of this duology. (Especially being in my Sinners era so I’m loving Black vampire lore) I feel like this book did a great job of recapping the previous events of book one. Definitely a satisfying ending.

I think Hayley Dennings is such a descriptive writer and I can truly envision her depictions. I also love this world with the 1920s but with vampires! The beast was a very compelling antagonist for this book.

<spoiler>I loved the resolution with her father and that the relationship was complicated. He did love her, but loved her too much sometimes and the way he displayed his love was very unhealthy. I also was NOT expecting the ending where they both die, especially because they truly did die and there was no nod to them actually being alive. I really respect the commitment there and it was a well done ending. </spoiler>

My only complaint from this book was that I wanted more from the world and more in depth explanations with the magic and lore that fuel this very compelling world that Dennings creates.

Overall, a good story and conclusion 4.25/5. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my eARC of this book!

I'm sorry to say that this sequel was a huge disappointment for me. I loved loved LOVED Our Ravenous Fate, but this one felt so incredibly rushed and unedited. Every plot point was extremely repetitive, it felt like they were just going around doing the same thing over and over, without explaining any of the reasoning behind their actions. There were even paragraphs where a variation of the same sentence was just being said over and over? No one ever had a plan. And the combination of rapid changes in POV paired with glossed over transitions felt like a lot of important details got swept under the rug. This felt less like a story, and more like a handful of interesting scenes with a cobbled together plot to justify them. The highlight was the relationship between Elise and Layla, and I did end up liking the ending, but this was just too fast-paced for what it deserved.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was… kind of a mess. It felt like things were happening just to happen and the things that were happening didn’t amount to anything in the end.

I didn’t feel any of the stakes in this book and was honestly pretty confused about most of the logic/science that was being thrown around. There were so many variations of reaper venom/poison/bonds(?) that I was having a hard time keeping track of everything that was being used and what the impacts were to a person.

Additionally, the chapters would end and then we would start the next chapter is a completely different place and be discussing something different. It was very jarring to have this intense event happen and then smash-cut to something completely irrelevant to what had just happened. I ended up being lost a lot of the time in between chapters.

Also, people would just… die? And the main characters would not really react? One character even seemingly came back from the dead just to immediately die again and we just… didn’t talk about it?

I thought this book would be working towards a cure for reapers and instead it was just these characters being thrown around in a tornado of a plot that really didn’t make that much sense.

The one bright spot was honestly Layla and Elise’s relationship, but even that was kind of ruined at the end just for the sake of shock-value? That ending didn’t feel like everything these characters had been working towards.

All-in-all, there was too much going on in this book and it was very hard to follow. I enjoyed the first book in this duology more just because I was keeping up with it and understanding the politics, and this one felt like a dramatic shift in terms of writing.

This is a solid end to a good duology. The yearning is still excellent, and there are still some very interesting politics happening in the world. My main critique is that the show not tell issue from the first book remains and this one gets repetitive. The atmosphere suffers because of this which was a really strong element of the first. I find myself very impacted by the ending, it’s ballsy and beautiful. Ultimately a story about the lengths we go to for love, that resonates in this time, especially as a queer person.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read early.

Rating: 2.5 stars

After loving book 1 I’m devastated that this did not live up to my expectations.
Everything that slightly bothered me in book 1 was a hundred time worse here.
The plot was all over the place and extremely repetitive. They went somewhere, something went wrong and they went back to Jamie’s being covered in blood. Literally, that’s basically the whole plot.
And while I truly loved the found family in here I felt like the author handed out redemption arcs like candy on Halloween lmao. Almost none of the absolute fatal betrayals from book 1 were even mentioned and everyone was like whatever let’s move on.

I feel like this book could’ve easily been shortened by at least 150 pages by simply cutting out a few of the completely random and unnecessary disasters. I understand that everything happened in order to solve this whole mystery but it got old way too soon.
The build up of the plot has been exactly like in book 1 but executed even worse.

And for me, the jumping between POVs was poorly executed and confusing. It often felt too drastic and in some chapters even like the scenes didn’t even belong together, like there was a mistake because it often just didn’t make any sense.

As for the relationship between Layla and Elise, I liked their dynamic even though it was a bit hot and cold. The ending, for some reason was beautiful. I didn’t see it coming but even though it’s devastating I liked it.

Overall I appreciate this duology for what it is: a very atmospheric story of oppression, revenge and autonomy. The spin on vampires (or reapers in this case) was extremely creative and didn’t feel like the same lukewarm vampire story we know since twilight.
I really enjoyed the references to real struggles black people had and still have to live through and found them to be perfectly integrated into this story.

I would still totally recommend to read this, especially after loving book 1 as the conclusion is lovely and wraps up this story very nice. I just think a lot more editing would’ve been needed to tell this story in all its glory.

I believe I am unfortunately going to have to DNF this book at about the 58% mark, despite loving the story, because I keep losing my place with location and plot descriptions. It very much could be me, and I plan to come back to this novel one day to finish this duology, but I kept running into issues where something in a location would be described and then the very next sentence seemed to contradict it, or sudden shifts in plot or pacing would occur and I would feel lost about what was going on. For instance, to give a mild spoiler, there was one scene where they scared away people at this party so the mysterious monster hunting them wouldn’t kill these innocents - but then, after they discuss all the people being outside, they then walk into the party and the scene continues. I acknowledge that this could be me not understanding what I read or the location descriptions, but this confusion kept happening throughout the novel as I was reading. I just kept losing my place as something would happen all of a sudden, and then something entirely new would suddenly occur that made the previous thing that happened seem either obsolete or contradictory. I do hope to come back to this world to finish this duology someday, however, because I really enjoyed the first book and recommend it to others often.

Thank you to the Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for providing me this e-ARC.

Wow, wow, wow, wow, W-O-W. Even better than the first one. I devoured this book in a matter of hours and never felt bad for postponing work-related assignments (don't rat me out, ahahah)!

I loved it.

*♡Thank you to to Hayley Dennings and Sourcebooks Fire for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion♡*
Hayley Dennings has made a wonderful conclusion to the Ravenous Fate duology with this book. She has created a world that is so vivid and really brings the characters to life. Be sure to have some tissues on hand because the ending will leave you in tears!!

A stunning conclusion to an amazing fantasy series. The characters arcs were so well developed and everyone ended up where they were felt natural and was fantastic to read. The overall plot was great and I can't wait to reread this series

A conclusion I was not ready for but a damn good one I can't even be mad about it. 5/5 stars, you want this for your shelf