'From the time Sasha was little, she'd known two things with utter certainty: There were monsters, and then there was Masha, who kept them safe.'

Olivie Blake writes such great up-to-date, socially conscious YA stuff. We know what to expect from her, and Blake delivers all these things in 'One for My Enemy': snappy dialogue; fizzing sexual tension; and well-fleshed-out, complex characters with fully developed backstories, as well as a few tense face-offs between those characters. Although in places, the character interaction and verbosity here can be a little green, 'One for My Enemy' most overtly demonstrates Blake's love of writing fantasy novels.

Like the Capulets and Montagues, this is a story of two families at war, but it is also the story of *two* pairs of lovers. And if I'm honest, even though I was addicted to Sasha and Lev's narrative - two wonderfully vivid characters - their vibrancy does end up highlighting the flatness of the second pair of lovers. Dimitri and Marya, in contrast, are exposed as robotic, moving through the motions of an overdone love story, compared to Sasha and Lev's bright and sparkling interactions. The number of times Blake puts Marya and Dimitri in face-off-to-the-death showdowns just exacerbates this flatness.

Speaking of which, the first few big surprises/face-offs between the families are thrilling, and the novel had me wondering how the next 300-odd pages were going to be filled, if all the excitement had already happened. Very early on in the novel, it felt like I had read a fully satisfying, complete narrative. But the twists and turns kept coming! The story came back to life again and again. Overall, though, there was a point where I reached and passed my maximum capacity for reveals and cliffhanger shocks. There were just too many betrayals; too many deals being made and hands shaken behind backs, which just served to overcomplicate the core concept of Blake's recasting of Romeo and Juliet's characters, motifs, and scenes. There certainly could have been a 'purer' version in there of a Romeo and Juliet retelling.

My first feeling after reading the final page, curiously enough, was that I was unsure about the character of Bryn and I disliked the function he served in the plot. The nature of his fae character made things too easy for Blake to solve plot problems and to spring surprises on her audience. Even Eric was more life-like and easier to swallow, for me, than the Bridge (trying to stick to vague terms so I don't give anything away!). Further to that, even though I loved some of Sasha's interactions with her other sisters (apart from Masha, I mean), I'm not convinced about the number of them. There were at least three more sisters than the story needed. Some of them were wholly unnecessary and vapid because of it.

The magical laws of this reality beg comparisons with the world-building in Harry Potter and in The Mortal Instruments, though Blake's refusal to explain things and just to employ these magical laws in the action is very satisfying.

I enjoyed the novel, and was excited to keep reading each time I returned to it, but if 'One for My Enemy' was held up against other new releases, such as 'Ink Blood Sister Scribe', it would, I fear, suffer in comparison, as too full of abstractions, a little self-indulgent in this manner; a smidgeon lacking in maturity.

My thanks to Pan Macmillan for an early review copy via NetGalley. Citation might change in final publication.

⭐️⭐️.5

Unlike most people this was my first time reading an Olivie Blake book and I had high hopes. I liked her writing style and the concept of the novel was great. A Shakespearean retelling with dashes of Russian and Slavic fairytales intertwined.

I particularly liked our leading characters Marya and Dima but found I didn’t care much for many others in the novel which was a shame. I did like Sasha and Lev but found their arc to be a little too ‘Insta love’ for me. I wasn’t expecting to have two sets of love interests in such similar situations and I found myself not really caring for the second one as much as the history between Dima and Marya was so much more layered.

I felt like this book could have been much shorter - there were definitely chapters, pages and sections of dialogue that didn’t necessarily need to be in the book (in my opinion!) and I did contemplate putting it down a number of times because it felt so slow. I’m glad I hung around for the last few chapters as there was one emotionally charged scene that I loved!

Overall an okay read but not one I’d rush to reread.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my advanced copy in exchange of a fair and honest review.

Poetic and lyrical, a complex web of intrigue and a cast of delightfully complex characters with equally complex relationships to each other. Nods to Romeo and Juliet and russian folklore in an urban fantasy setting. A refreshing take on how love takes many forms and how loving and being loved shapes you as a person.

Lost 1 star as I felt the pacing could have been slightly more even and I also wish we had more interactions with the other antonov sisters because I love them!

One For My Enemy is a gripping and emotional read that explores the complexities of love, revenge and forgiveness. It is a witchy retelling of Romeo and Juliet with rival families fighting for power in a New York run by magic. The story follows the journey of two characters, Sasha and Lev, who are brought together by a shared tragedy. The chemistry between the characters is electric, and the tension between them is palpable.

It features strong women and morally grey characters galore. You don’t know who to root for, and that makes it all the more compelling.

The writing is beautiful and the pacing is perfect. The story is filled with twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. The themes of forgiveness, redemption and second chances are woven throughout the story, making it a truly moving and thought-provoking read.

Overall, One For My Enemy is a beautifully written and emotionally charged story that I would highly recommend to anyone who loves a good romance with a strong emotional core.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an eARC of One For My Enemy in exchange for my honest review.

I have never liked the story of Romeo and Juliette, and I have always hated it when it is referred to as romance, as to me, it really is not. But this book takes the premise of two star-crossed lovers and runs with it. Add in magic, and drugs and set it in modern-day New York and you have a tale to tell over the ages.

I loved the Russian folklore in this book, it melded so well with the magical world side of things, and it gave a real sense of the villains, but also using the Russian form of shortening names and adapting them to make the person feel loved was a great touch.

The retribution/revenge of the rich comes across strongly, they did not care who got in their way, vengeance runs as hot as passion in this book. A must-read.

I can not give this enough praise it is just AMAZING. One For My Enemy has everything you would ever need in a book, Olivia Blake has done it again and made another literary masterpiece. Honestly this is just mesmerising heart wrenching read I literally couldn't put it down. The writing is just so beautiful, with a romance for the ages, there are so many stunning quotes with messy yet enchanting romances, I felt like I went through every single emotion reading this and I have not cried at a book in so long, I really cannot recommend this enough and express how amazing the writing, plot and characters are. I'm so sad this is a standalone because I could read and read about this family and the witches and fae, however I also think the ending was heartbreakingly perfect so it also ending in such a great way. Also the art in-between chapters is SO SO beautiful it added another layer of connection to the characters. I highly recommend this to anyone I think it is a must read.

4.5/5
I didn't quite know what to expect from this since I hadn't enjoyed Blake's work in the past, but this was probably my most pleasant surprise of the year and ticked all my boxes!
ONE FOR MY ENEMY is the lovechild of Tolstoy and Shakespeare, raised by Chloe Gong and having binged an awful lot of CHARMED.
Messy family dynamics? Checked
Underground magic crime? Checked
Enemies to lovers? Angst? Yearning? Tension? CHECKED, CHECKED AND CHECKED.
This was truly written with me as the target audience in mind.

Thank you to Pan MacMillan for this ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was very excited to receive the Arc of this book and it did not disappoint!

I loved the concept of the Fantasy Romeo and Juliet retelling, I loved the main characters, the multiple POVs and timelines and the plot!

The book was gripping and the writing was mesmerising.

I did find I got a little bit lost at parts in the book as I usually do with fantasy books but it was easy to go back a tiny bit and find where I was getting a bit muddled.

The art between chapters was absolutely beautiful and I loved this addition to the book.

This was the first of Olivie Blake’s books that I’ve read, despite owning several of them and this has really pushed her books up my TBR list!

I gave this book a 4.5 ⭐️

3.5 stars rounded up — this was a gripping offering from Olivie Blake, and an imaginative retelling of Romeo and Juliet to boot!
Olivie Blake’s strengths are usually (for me) her prose and her characters, and both of these were beautifully handled in One for My Enemy. Like many other reviewers, I was surprised by how much I ended up loving Marya, even when she leaned into her darker side. Marya and Dima’s relationship was so compelling and felt as epic and dramatic as a Shakespeare retelling tends to demand. I know that it’s Lev and Sasha who are the protagonists, but I think one of the most creative things about this retelling was that elements of the Romeo and Juliet story applied to both Marya and Dima and to Lev and Sasha.
The dialogue was snappy and endearing for the most part (and when it wasn’t, I felt like it wasn’t meant to be) and it reminded me of some of my favourite moments of The Atlas Six. Sasha and Lev had some excellent moments of banter, and Marya and Sasha in particular had some killer lines.
What kept this from being 5 stars for me was, in general, fuzziness. I don’t mind soft magic systems, but even by those standards, I still have no idea how it is that magic works in this world. Is it hereditary? What are the costs of using it? What are the limits? What exactly was going on with the shadow creatures? If that had been clearer, I think it would have added an interesting dimension to the stakes of the story. I also felt that the size of the cast of characters sometimes meant they didn’t get enough time on the page to have as much impact as they could. There were some Antonova sisters that we barely saw, and personally I would have loved more scenes with Koschei and Baba Yaga! They were such looming presences in the story, and I wanted to see more directly why they had so much power over everyone else. And the last part of the fuzziness is actually in the setting — it was modern-day New York, but sometimes this was easy to forget.
All in all, this is a compelling, beautifully written, and inventive novel. It’s not perfect, but it was definitely a fun ride!

{AD|GIFTED} This was probably 4.5 stars overall as I absolutely loved the atmosphere of this one. The world-building was fascinating, the characters were superb, and the prose was typical Olivie Blake. Some of the sentences are exquisitely crafted and I just kept highlighting as I read. Tied with The Atlas Six as my favourite Olivie Blake so far.

I adored this book! Olivie Blake just has a way of writing that I find so utterly beautiful. All the characters were amazingly fleshed out too. I went in expecting one love story and I ended up with three stunningly tragic ones. Ugh, the number of quotes that I want to remember forever! I honestly felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster with this one, in the best possible way! I was laughing out loud one moment, falling in love the next, and then crying real tears a second later!
tI haven't read Romeo and Juliet (because reading Shakespeare gives me flashbacks to secondary school and I try to repress those memories) but I'll always love the retellings and this one has cemented itself as one of my faves! I really feel like this is a book I could read over and over and never get sick of it!

An incredible read. I personally did not feel Blake's 'Alone with you in the Ether' was for me, but this book is my favourite of hers so far. A beautiful and witchy retelling of Romeo and Juliet that broke my heart into a million pieces. I will forever be thinking of this book!

After being slowly enticed by the glowing reviews of Olivie Blake’s Atlas Six series, I finally decided to take the plunge with this one. I’m a huge fan of Alice Hoffman so magic, romance and witchery are right up my street. However, this was the same themes but with some added NYC grit and sass.

In New York City, two rival witch families fight for the upper hand.

The Antonova sisters are beautiful, cunning and ruthless, and their mother – known only as Baba Yaga – is the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants. Their adversaries, the influential Fedorov brothers, serve their crime boss father. Named Koschei the Deathless, his enterprise dominates the shadows of magical Manhattan.

For twelve years, the families have maintained a fraught stalemate. Then everything is thrown into disarray. Bad blood carries them to the brink of disaster, even as fate draws together a brother and sister from either side. Yet the siblings still struggle for power, and internal conflicts could destroy each family from within. That is, if the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy both sides first.

I found myself hurled straight into this world, which is ours but harbours a secret world within of rival witch families vying to supply humans with magical pharmaceuticals. I loved the idea that there might be other realm within own, hiding in plain sight. Baba Yaga has a shop - like Lush but with extra ingredients - whereas the Federovs sell on the streets and in the bars and clubs of the city. The rivalry and language of their industry was very ‘gangster’, with specific territories and penalties for stepping out of line. Head of the patriarchal Federovs is eldest brother ??? And the matriarchal Antonova sisters, although doing the bidding of Baba Yaga, are kept in line by eldest daughter Marya, known as Masha. The scene that grabbed me was Masha simply walking into the Federovs lair and demanding to see second brother Dima. There has been an issue with territory and Masha believes it is Dima’s fault, so she carries out a terrifying enchantment that leaves Dima totally incapacitated. I was fascinated that youngest brother Lev tries to stop her,, but is held back by his brother. Is there an honour code between the families? Even more intriguing is the obvious and immediate chemistry between Dima and Masha. The atmosphere was electric, charged with feelings and I was drying to know what had happened before and if these two had feelings for each other. If so, Masha is ruthless when it comes to business, but must have been full of hidden emotion. Would she be just as ruthless when protecting her family?

This scene showed me that Masha was confident in her power and very likely the successor to her mother. Masha is overseeing the expansion of their business. I found the idea of pharmaceutical drugs touched by magic fascinating too, I wanted to know more about their effects and whether they were largely benign. Did the customers truly know the power of what they were buying? I wondered about the family’s ethics with regards to black or white magic and was intrigued by how both families used their magic differently. Lev is sent to check out the clubs and see if he can work out the Antonov family’s next move, but he is distracted from his job by a young beautiful woman being hassled by a college student. As soon as he sees her he wants to help her, but already his attraction to her is obvious. She is very assertive and assures him she can look after herself and as Lev follows them out of the club she breaks the student’s nose. Intrigued by her confidence and the way she handled the situation, Lev offers to walk her home. Every block she tells him she can manage, but Lev has fallen in too deep already and the attraction is mutual. They have a passionate encounter down a side street. What Lev doesn’t know is that this young woman is Sasha, youngest of the Antonova sisters. As the pair fall in love, Lev confides the task he’s been given by his brothers. I wondered how she would react and whether she’s think his feelings were genuine or entrapment. Lev’s feelings are genuine and I was already wondering whether this was a repeat of Masha and Dima’s story. More importantly, if it comes to a showdown between the two families, which side would Lev choose?

Considering the amount of characters, they do have depth and feel very real. I think their back stories helped and the Russian folklore woven into their backgrounds seemed to ground them. Koshchei the Deathless is a male protagonist in Russian folklore, usually cast as an evil father figure who imprisons the male hero’s lover. He is called the immortal because he keeps his soul hidden within inanimate objects. Often he would hide his soul inside a tiny object then place it inside another object, perhaps an animal, like a rather grotesque set of Russian dolls. Baba Yaga was originally a supernatural being who hides within the disguise of a grotesque old woman. In a bizarre version of her story, which I love, she lived in a kettle with chicken’s legs - rather like the archetypal witch we all know from fairy tales. She would often take a maternal role and use that to hinder a character from the story. How these archetypes work within this story I’ll leave for you to find out. Then there’s the Romeo and Juliet parallel which certainly gives us the basic plot line of two rival families, where the youngest members of each family are falling in love with each other. That’s really where the comparisons end, because this is a loose retelling so don’t expect specific characters or even the same plot lines. This is a tragedy and it’s genuinely heartbreaking, but with gritty, real violence and it’s bloody consequences, just don’t expect the same victims. I loved that the rivalries are decades old and I think there’s definitely scope for more novels in this setting.

Although I loved Blake’s descriptive prose and enjoyed her characters, I did feel that the central love story lacked a bit of depth. I could tell these characters were in lust because their scenes were hot, but I didn’t feel the love at first. Perhaps that’s because I’m an older reader though and why I was interested in the oldest sister’s story. Also there were so many twists towards the end I had to go back and re-read sections to keep up with what was going on. However, for such a big book, it really fly by and the heady mix of love, power, magic, revenge and tragedy is a winner for sure. The art both inside and on the cover is absolutely beautiful. I feel that I could easily come back to these rival families in the future and it has certainly made me want to check out the author’s previous novels. If you like your love stories dark and laced with magic, violent tragedy and witches this is the book for you. It was definitely the book for me.

I haven’t read anything like this in a long time. A witchy, mafia, Romeo and Juliet mash-up with fae. The only thing missing were the vampires (although you would never guess it from the amount of blood carelessly gushing around). And I didn’t miss them, because, let’s be honest, the whole vampire thing has been done to death (no pun intended), hasn’t it?
The prose is a little intense, in my opinion (less typically being more), but even that was refreshingly different.
I loved the characters, all of them, even the bit parts. They all had character; no mean feat given the size of the cast.
Anyway, it was jolly good and if the fancy language doesn’t annoy you then I thoroughly recommend it.
Five stars and a big fat thank you to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for the ARC.

Oh i loved every second of this book!!! the writing styled, the plot, the characters… just everting!!!! I could not put it down. Need to read everything Olivie Blake has published!!!!!!

This was a fantastic book!! I never knew what was coming next, olivie blakes writing captures you from the first page. This book has two rival witch familles fighting for power, romance ,betrayal and so much more!! I loved the characters how all of plots interacted. I loved every moment and everyone should read it!!!

'"You want me to burn for you?" She asked. "Then watch me burn."'

The way that I inhaled this book was frankly unfounded.

A retelling of Romeo and Juliet that's based in Russian Folklore with witches and fae? Absolutely count me in. Being a big fan of The Atlas Six series, I adore the magical way in which Blake writes, she makes magical realism one of the most poetic things to read and for this I cannot thank her enough.

Having a degree in predominantly Shakespeare studies, I thought I would be sick of Romeo and Juliet retellings but boy was I wrong. The tragedy in this ripped my heart out and stomped on it and I would let Olivie Blake do it to me all over again.

Gorgeous, gorgeous book.

Thank you to @Netgalley and @PanMacmillan for the absolute pleasure of reading this book!

As a lover of all of Olivie Blake’s previous published works, i had exceptionally high standards going into One for my enemy.

I went into this novel with high expectations and once again they were exceeded. The beautiful writing which i have come to associate with Olivie Blake lent itself perfectly to the story of grief, revenge and, at its core, love.

The characters that she is able to craft blow me away every single time and i always get the sense that i have become so invested and part of their world when i have finished one of her novels, this one being no different.

The story, the characters and the emotions that this book created were just phenomenal and i look forward to Olivia’s future releases.

I absolutely loved this, Olivie Blake is becoming my favourite author for sure, the way you have no choice but to fall in love with her characters and their stories

Two rival witch families vie for power in New York City, in an urban retelling of Romeo and Juliet, with feuding families, forbidden love, treachery and emotion.
I loved the fantasy element of this story, set as it is against a real world of college, rich kids and downtown drugs and gangs. I really enjoyed the characters and was rooting for Lev and Sasha as much as for Masha and Dimi.
Naturally to path of true love does not run smoothly and there are twists and turns as the characters strive to live their lives to the full.
Most of all however, I really loved the character of The Bridge. His selfish and ego-centric existence and pithy quips brought a little humour to an otherwise strongly emotional story.
This was the first book I've read by this author and I very much enjoyed it and will happily look out for more.
With thanks to Netgalley and Pan MacMillan for an early copy in return for an honest review.