❝The only thing worse than making another champion your enemy is making them a friend.❞

Murder, magic, teens fighting to the death, betrayals... All of Us Villains was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021. The premise and characters, this sounded brilliant especially as it was pitched as the next The Hunger Games I was so excited!

Unfortunately this failed to deliver for me, it felt kind of lacklustre? The threats didn't feel as high as they were meant to, the murder was dialled down to about 2/10, and the two girls' narratives (Briony and Isobel) were quite similar so it was sometimes hard to discern which perspective I was reading from.

Don't get me wrong, this had some great moments that stood out. I loved the relationship between Alastair and his brother Hendry. I liked the relationship between Alastair and Isobel. I liked how Alastair was such a rich character, he had many sides to him and he's not quite the villain you expect. (Can you tell who my favourite was yet? lol) I liked how most of the characters had their own motives and felt well fleshed out. I wonder why the authors decided to only include the perspectives from four contestants (Alastair, Briony, Isobel and Gavin) and then there were three others that I didn't really care about, we don't get to read from their viewpoint so we don't get to connect with them unfortunately.

❝Monsters couldn't harm you if you were a monster, too.❞

The plot was good, I liked the pacing and the drama does build but it didn't feel like high stakes. There were some shocking moments, such as the lengths some families and people will go to in order to win this tournament. I really enjoyed the aspect of magical jewellery containing spells and curses, this was one of my favourite parts of the book and the use of magic was explained well. I liked the romance between certain characters, it has the 'only one bed' trope and a suggestive 'make me' comment among many other cute moments, which I enjoyed!

I liked the world-building but it felt a bit rushed at times, I wanted more. Some families houses were described in a lot of detail, whereas others felt like it was just brushed over.

❝Full of dark-stained pine wood and iron candlebras, it was where maidens pricked their fingers on spinning wheels, where every fruit tasted of poison and vice.❞

All of Us Villains is half of a duology, and this ends on a big cliffhanger. I was left with more questions than answers at the ending and this left me unsatisfied. I will read the next instalment to see how it ends as I need answers to my questions.

3 out of 5 stars overall.

*Thank you to the publishers for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review

CW/TWs:
•murder
•toxic relationships
•violence
•blood
•death
•grief
•emotional abuse
•emetophobia
•generational trauma

Based on what other people have said about All of Us Villains, I was expecting to read The Hunger Games as if written by George R.R. Martin with fewer descriptions of feasts and more political backstabbing. And angsty romance because this is, after all, a book geared towards young adults. Part of me sadistically wanted a bit of Abercrombie in there too. Wish fulfillment. I wanted brutality.

I have to say, I *hate* how this is marketed. "You Fell In Love With The Victors of The Hunger Games. Now Prepare To Meet The Villains of The Blood Veil." No. I don't know millions of people on the planet but of those that I do know, we thought the first Hunger Game book & film were okay, the second was decent, and then we lost interest. I'm sure profits will beat me over the head otherwise but I have yet to meet a person who will stand behind their money. AND paying for something doesn't mean you enjoyed it. So I'm still right because I want to be. Even though this book does have comparisons to the Hunger Games in terms of a tournament where people have to kill each other, I think we should let the reader make their own connections. I would love to have someone read this that has never watched the films or read the books and then tell me what it is similar to in their opinion. It typecasts the book too much.

There were two twists in the beginning of the book which I expected to occur differently. I had the actions mostly correct, but they happened to other characters. And, as mentioned above, for some reason I expected more brutality, gore, and heartlessness. In a way, I was slightly disappointed that the book constantly went against my expectations. Did it matter? No, because this pretty much kicked ass.

I guess ultimately what I am trying to say is that it was perfect for the book that it was, but I wish it was slightly more into the adult side than skewered to young adults. Pushing the envelope would have put diamonds in my eyes. I can't believe that this book doesn't come out until November which means a sequel won't be out any time soon. I need the rest of this story. I have to find out what's next.

And this is neither here nor there in terms of a review but it was sent to my Kindle as uncorrected proof. Usually, I never make an effort to mention this but there were moments where it wasn't clear if, for instance, a character was part of the LGBT community or not because words seemed to swap around. One sentence mentioned how someone's father was the sister of someone's mother or something along those lines. So, that's obviously an uncorrected typo but when it comes to someone's orientation, for instance, a thing like that could have a bigger effect on the story. In one section of the book there are numerous characters who appear to be part of the LGBT community but since they were side characters or only mentioned once, maybe some of those were typos. Does it matter? No, because the overall story wasn't about the majority of those characters but it's something I noticed. There was also a section where during a conversation with the main character and his mother or grandmother, it was followed by a fragment of the end of a sentence followed by a fragment of another sentence, and then abruptly the conversation was over. So a section of the book was missing but I am not sure how much.

Let’s be real. All of Us Villains is the first book I read, where not liking any of the characters is actually a good thing.
But let’s start somewhere else.
The worldbuilding. I really liked the town and the magic system. It wasn’t exactly total new, but well rounded and the authors took ideas from existing magic systems and combined it really well into something good.
Same for the families and their background. They were interesting, intriguing and lots of them hate-worthy. Which is actually a good thing reading this book. I guess.
The tournament itself reminded me on video games and I enjoyed it a good time.
We have a lot of elements which are not exactly new, but really well combined into something different and perfectly fitting into this story.
For the seven characters, there were only one or two I liked. The rest were kinda foolish, self absorbed and pathetic. But again, I didn’t mind it, because they were destined to be villains and unlikable. Throughout the tournament I hoped the most annoying champions were going to die, because only one will survive. At least that’s what the rules say.
We had a lot of twists and turns, nice magic, characters with heaps of flaws and an intriguing plot.
I really enjoyed this book. I’m still not quite sure for which champion I’m hoping to survive. All I know, it’s not one of this annoying, selfish female champions. But then again, Gavin and Alistar are villains too. I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to book 2.

When I saw All of Us Villains pitched as The Hunger Games with magic, I immediately added it to my TBR and as soon as I picked it up it was incredibly hard to put down. It was filled to the brim with morally grey characters, an intricate magic system, family feuds, a smidgen of enemies to lovers, mystery and heaps betrayals.

I absolutely loved all the characters and the use of multiple POVs definitely worked with this storyline, as it enables you to learn about the different family’s stories and motives. I really thought at the beginning of the book there would be one person that I really rooted for but it was near impossible to pick! I also adored the incredibly immersive writing style paired with this kind of plot. I absolutely loved every minute of reading this book and definitely recommend adding to your TBR if you love dark YA fantasy.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Orion Publishing Group for giving me and eARC in exchange for an honest review.

'Pale as plague and silent as spirits'. This quote still gives me shivers even after finishing the book.

Rival families, a teenage tournament to the death, curses, and the darker side of wanting power; with vibes from amazing books like the Hunger Games, The Maze Runner and every dark fantasy YA tale you can think of.

A uniquely complex, yet simple magic system cursed to make the deadly and gruesome more powerful and the weak die with only a cross through their name to remember them by. Once a generation, each of the seven families select a champion for the blood curse tournament to complete in the hopes their teenager comes out on top, so they can claim all the high magic in the world left as their own for the next generation... until the tournament resets roughly every 20 years. This is not a ‘pretty fairy-tale’ where the winner saves the kingdom, and no one dies... this is a curse and magic filled story told from multiple perspectives but in a YA fashion. So not as much blood, guts, and gore descriptions as you would think; think more with a covering of blood then bathing in it.

Although confusing at first, I delved into the tale investing myself in one character after the other until I found the character I connected with the most. I enjoyed reading from every perspective... but she (not naming so not to spoil) was definitely the one I became fully invested in and I felt myself not as connected with the other characters on their chapters the further along I read.

The world building is intriguing, the writing well done, and the ending just had me staring at my kindle cursing at the authors for leaving it the way they did for at least thirty minutes straight having myself a little pity party needing to know what happens next.

So, yes there are some negatives with this book unfortunately. The biggest negative I felt was that the book wavered a lot, I was reading this story that I swear could have been condensed down into half the number of pages and therefore creating this as a standalone, and to be honest probably a 5-star book if this were done. I am a massive villain fan so this book with a title like this had been on my wishlist since I spotted it in 2020, then the blurb came out... and I shrieked with excitement... then the cover... and finally I was lucky enough to have it in my hands on my kindle as an early copy; but it just missed the mark somehow. Maybe I built it up so much that it was never going to reach that high. At the beginning it was so amazing, and I was honestly hooked, and same can be said for the ending section. Somewhere in the middle it just dropped, and I lost my connection with the book for long enough periods of time that it was hard to fully get back into the story as I had at the beginning, which is a true shame.

Saying that I will be reading the sequel and I would totally recommend this to anyone wanting a dark fantasy in the same likes as The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner but with magic. I just wise this had been made a full book in standalone form so my heart could have loved it and it could have been the 5 star masterpiece I truly think it could have been.

A massive thank you to Orion Books and Netgallery for sending me this early copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an eARC of Little Thieves in exchange for an honest review.

I was intrigued by the synopsis of this book, and drawn in by the comparison to The Hunger Games.

The city of Ilvernath finds itself in the spotlight after the publication of a tell-all book has revealed its ancient curse to the world. Every generation, seven families each name a champion to compete in a tournament to the death, and the winner gains control over the city’s high magick supply, the last of the most powerful resource in the world.

All of Us Villains is told with alternating POV, allowing us insights into the background story of the different champion and their motifs for entering the tournament. The run-up to the fall of the blood veil, which marks the start of the tournament, contains a lot of world-building and explores the dynamics between the different champions.
Once the tournament starts, the action speeds up. There is backstabbing, manipulation, scheming and plenty of blood and gore. Alliances are made and broken, but even though the champions are out to kill each other, they felt more like victims than villains to me. There are some really dark elements to this book, particularly in the legacy of some of the characters.

The ending of the book felt a bit rushed, but I am excited to see where the second book will take the story.

I find it so difficult to give this book a raging as I enjoyed the book the whole way through, but the ending just leaves everything unresolved. I appreciate the author is leaving it open for a sequel but I just felt a bit disappointed. Other than the ending, the characters are well built and the plot flows well. I would recommend this if you're prepared to wait for the sequel for a resolution to any of the plotlines

Thank you to Netgalley, the authors and the publisher for an arc of this book.

So this was a difficult one to rate for me. I’m still debating between a 3 or a 4 star, here’s why.

The premise of this book gripped me, anything compared to the hunger games is something I’m interested in reading. However, I don’t see the comparison at all. Other than them both being a ‘death’ competition’ (although there was hardly any death in this considering) they were not similar at all. For a book called ‘All of us villains’ it was kind of, lacking villains?

Something that disappointed me somewhat was how little the characters made you care about them. I get that they’re all supposed to be ‘villains’, but I just didn’t care if any of them lived/died/won/lost or evaporated into thin air. I appreciated the multiple POV’s, but I think if there had been less then we may have been able to develop more interest in the characters.

And the romance didn’t make sense to me. It felt like it was completely out of character. I like how it turned out in the end, but it threw me a lot.

So the reason I’m tempted to give this book 4 stars is because although I have some qualms with it, I desperately need to know what happens next. The cliffhanger has made me want to cry, especially as this book hasn’t been released yet so I have to wait so much longer!

This has been getting a lot of hype and I think it mostly deserves it. It is a dark fantasy story with morally grey characters and twists and turns every other chapter. It took me a few days to get through it but it was engrossing and kept me wanting to get back to it.

The story is set in a city where every twenty years seven 'champions' from the seven major families enter into a magical battle to the death with the winner receiving access to high magic for their family for the next two decades. It's told from alternating POVs of four of the seven champions and each of them has entered the competition for their own hidden purposes. Throughout the entirety of the book, they are constantly manipulating and betraying each other for their own gains. Everyone here is morally grey at best.

The language is delightful and engaging and the descriptions are mesmirazing. It's quite bloody and vicious and it doesn't hold back. My one big complaint is how slow of a starter it was. The competition didn't start until about 40% through maybe more and the build-up got a little bit redundant.

All of the characters were interesting and very well fleshed out. I did like some of them over others (one of them annoyed me so much until the final 40 pages or so) but interestingly the characters I sided with at the beginning were not the ones I ended up liking the most.

Overall I really enjoyed this and am excited to read the sequel.

I received an ARC of this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was enrapturing so much that I devoured it in one sitting. The idyllic town holding a secret now known to the world provided the backdrop for the entwining characters and points of view to sparkle. The plot undertakes a darker story with shimmers of hope that enthral the reader to the highs and lows of the characters. The explosive last 100 pages really brought me back to a time of the hunger games and hopefully a revival of the battle royale genre with a twist.

4.5 stars

All of Us Villains is a wickedly addictive and decadently insatiable dark YA fantasy, I was obsessed from the very first page and literally couldn’t put it down. It’s Gossip Girl meets The Hunger Games with a cunning,Slytherin twist—and I absolutely loved it!

The city of Ilvernath has been thrust into the spotlight after a tell all book exposes an ancient curse and a deadly battle that takes place once every generation. champions are chosen from seven of the cities oldest families, to compete in a tournament to the death—the winner awards their family control over the cities supply of High Magick (The most powerful resource in the world.)

The Lowes, with a reputation as the most villainous and heinous of the seven families,have won almost every tournament;but with the new found notoriety, each champion has a higher chance at winning. Or better yet—a chance to rewrite their story.

But, it’s a story that can only be penned in blood...

Honestly, words cannot do justice to how utterly enthralling this was. The writing was beautifully descriptive and the characters were well written and complex.

It’s told from the POV of four of the seven champions, (and though they’re all morally grey) some of their motivations for entering the contest were well reasoned and at times, even relatable—though not always. I also thought the dynamics explored between the champions and their families (as well as each other) really made them feel like flesh and blood people not just characters, which I loved.

I have to admit, half the fun was trying to guess what would happen next and who would backstab,manipulate or try to kill whom (the multiple POVs definitely came in handy.) The pacing was good and the world building was fantastically immersive,I’d love to explore Ilvernath (just not during the Blood Veil.) Overall it was incredibly entertaining and after that cliffhanger of an ending I’m eager to find out what happens next. Seriously, I need a copy of the sequel ASAP!

Also a huge thank you to Gollancz and NetGalley for the ARC.

I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley and all opionins are my own.
This book is definitely not suitable for younger readers and perfect for those who are fans of dark fantasy, with its cast of morally grey characters and bloody scenes. The writing is incredibly atmospheric with the odd quip thrown in here and there to prevent the writing from becoming overly melodramatic. The characters are well developed and complex, each with intricately detailed and explained back stories. The story has plenty of twists and turns, some of which are truly shocking. With its breathtaking cliffhanger, I can't wait to read more about this story.

Think of this as a magical Gossip Girl meets The Hunger Games with a dash of Nevernight. So, pretty damn addictive. It hits that easy reading and moreish vibe that I’ve been looking for. I need more ASAP and desperately. Also this will be PERFECT for a screen adaptation. I don’t think I’ve read anything that is as suited to adaptation as this is.

All Of Us Villains is one of those books where having a larger cast of main characters works great – it follows the seven contestants through the story as well as some tangential characters. Through its limited setting in the game, the world is contained and small, and tensions are high, leading to extreme reactions from everyone involved. This is a lot of fun to read. Honestly, none of the characters were especially NICE people, but all of them were interesting. I think my favourites were Isobel and Briony, and I might even have shipped them a little – and while that’s not where the story went, who knows where the twists of book two will take the contestants!

One thing I really loved about this is that the characters are thrown into this situation where they are all competing against each other, battle royale style. But Briony realises just before the competition starts that there might be a way to stop the whole thing from happening if they all work together, and a major part of the story is her trying to get the contestants to work together in a situation that is designed to pit them against each other. These psychological dynamics are really interesting, and I am super curious where the authors will be taking this in the second book, especially after the way this one ends.

So, um, you need this book ASAP.

One of my best reads!
I’m in love with book! Once I started reading it I didn’t want this to finish! I haven’t read such a good book for some time now.

If you like Hunger Games then this is your vibe. The book is SO well written, the plot is AMAZING and it pulls you in right from the beginning.

I love that it’s dark. I love that it’s always balancing between right and wrong, good and bad. I love the fact that you can interpret it regarding the point of view you look at it. Another thing I loved is the fact that the characters are well-developed but multi-dimensional. It’s not only that they have depth but we see clearly each one’s personality, their thoughts, their faults, their strengths, everything! And it’s extended to the families too where we can see their values, legacies, truths. I found that remarkable for the writer to achieve in a book.

I don’t know how many books will follow but I’ll go all the way with this series. I want to say a big thank you for this amazing book! And a big, massive, well done!

All Of Us Villains is just too derivative to make it as an original work. I was very excited to be offered an advance copy with the promise of a book reminiscent of the Hunger Games. We've already had many of these already in Maze Runner, Divergent and The Giver. None have managed to capture the heart of the original Hunger Games books which have deceptively real themes like capitalism and the widening inequality of wealth hidden among more familiar YA tropes.
The story begins with the challenge of figuring out exactly who Gossip Girl is as an anonymous tell-all has been written about the centuries old tournament of magick. Our main villain is Draco Malfoy but with dark hair- this insert is so obvious Alistair actually feels kinships with dragons and fire spells. I could have accepted all of the obvious borrowing (let's face it, Stephanie Meyer got a whole career out of it) but we never get a chance to care about these teenagers. So much time is spent on angst and clumsy attempts at romance that it feels like the authors ran out of time and had to wrap things up. The end is both abrupt and dissatisfying after all that navel gazing.
This isn't a terrible book, it's fine if you want more of the same. I just wish that instead of trying to reskin characters that worked for someone else we could see more original ideas to push fiction forward instead of relying on the past.

I'm really torn about this one. All of Us Villains has a slow but intriguing start, and we're nearly half-way through by the time the Hunger Games comparisons start to really come into play. However, I was engrossed the whole way through - I enjoyed learning more about these characters, and the last half is much more action packed, with plenty of twists and turns.
There are some flaws here though. Despite being a huge fan of novels with multiple POVs, I didn't always feel that the different characters had solid enough personalities to make it work in this case. I sometimes had difficulty keeping track of who was who.
Ultimately, the biggest let-down here was the very abrupt ending, which dragged my rating down from a solid 3.5 (with moments of 4), to a 3. Everything felt quite rushed, and there was no feeling of conclusion at all. I was once sent an incomplete ARC by mistake, and this honestly felt like that - I get that there's a second book (although I foolishly assumed this was a standalone going into it), and can appreciate the decision to end the first installment at this point, but it didn't feel like a fully formed cliffhanger either. I want to know what happens next, but I'm not sure if I'll remember everything that happened by the time the sequel comes out. I can see myself picking it up, as I certainly had a great experience reading this book until its climax, but my ultimate feeling is sadly one of disappointment.

I love this book, it's dark and twisty. It's really interesting to see a book where every character is villainous and dark like even the main character is quite villainous really and I think that's a good selling point for this book. It gave me dark hunger games vibes which I think really works well. This would make a fantastic series and I'm really hoping the authors will take it in that direction as I would definitely pick up this series.

All of Us Villains has such an incredible premise, it makes you wonder how it will possibly live up to it. A cursed town, morally gray characters, and a magic tournament would be enough to have most readers salivating; but you add mystery, magic, family feuds… it sounds almost too good to be true.

Good news: it definitely delivers.

It takes a minute to introduce the the stars of the show, but then it gets going and we don’t just get action (though there’s plenty of that), we get a story that becomes so rich, so immersive, that it absorbs you <b>completely</b>.

The magic tournament will no doubt be a big draw, particularly for fans of the Harry Potter franchise and V.E. Schwab’s ADSOM, with its Essen Tasch; but as you understand more about how the tournament course works, it also gives you more insight into how victory and loss would affect each of the founding families and their different (but equally messed-up) dynamics within the respective nuclei.

As for the characters, I really appreciated that they weren’t cookie-cutter, tropey cardboard cutouts. Almost every single character introduced is somewhere between morally gray to pure evil, and it makes for interesting reading when handled well, as it is here. Alistair’s mom and grandma are kind of the token evil stepmothers of the story, a bit flat in their absolute evilness, but everyone else is well characterized and realistically portrayed.
<b><i>Books often portray good and evil as black and white, but it’s a gradient scale, and each gradient has facets. This book shows that. </I></b>

The range of emotions and character dynamics the book explores is very impressive, as well: we aren’t talking moody teens, but well thought-out arcs and developments. They soon start feeling like real people — and that’s when you know the book is great.

The world building, story arc, and characters arcs are all woven together so seamlessly and beautifully, and this vivid, “full immersion” feeling is my favorite thing to experience as a reader, because it leads to me feeling extremely close to the characters and invested in their choices, their challenges can and their destinies.

I have a few minor qualms that made me take off half a star: the writing stiffens up slight on occasion, though it doesn’t affect the overall pace too much; and there are a couple of fairly minor instances of info-dumping at the very beginning when establishing the world. One of them is when the Relics are explained, and it made me worry that the authors might be setting up for several instances of Deux ex machina, but it was actually handled very nicely in the book.

Overall a really really good read; one of my top favorites of 2021 so far!

**4 1/2 STARS**


Note: I’d like to thank Orion for granting me access to an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

All of Us Villains is a brilliant, dark and thoroughly twisted story, in which 7 Champions fight to the death in order to win access to powerful magic for their families.

All the way through this book, I found myself shocked by the twists and completely uncertain who I was rooting for. The start was a little confusing given the number of characters, but each is so fantastically written that after a few chapters I was completely ensnared. If you like masterful world building and morally ambiguous characters, this book is for you. I'm desperate to read the sequel!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

All of Us Villains has an interesting premise. I thought it would entirely be a copy of The Hunger Games, but it definitely wasn't. It pulls off the tournament trope really well and gives it a twisted, dark spin. And I thought I would enjoy this, but that didn't turn out to the case. For the first two quarters of the book, I'd say there's a lot of build up to the tournament; we get multiple points of view and backstories of all the main characters. Unfortunately, the tournament portion moves fast, too fast actually. Things seemed to happen so quick and end up becoming a little convulated. We come know that the tournament itself is a curse and has some rigid rules, but the second it starts, all these rules seemingly start breaking down.

As much as I loved the world the authors created, with the grim and gritty vibes, the characters were hard to connect to and I only enjoyed reading from Alistair's perspective. And the ending felt too abrupt, so much so that I had to scroll back up to see if I had missed a chapter or something.

Still, I'd say this is worth giving a try, just for the world building done in this