Such a good book. I was hooked from the first page. Star-crossed lovers, Magic and powerful main characters. I could not put the *book* down. Olivie Blake's writing was phenomenal as usual. The plot was action packed and fast paced which is exactly what I needed this month. The story was completely unpredictable for me as I have never read Romeo and Juliet but I am sure that Shakespeare fans will love Olivie Blake's take on the play.
Thank you NetGalley and Tor PanMacmillan for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars! I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. I'm not usually a fan of Romeo and Juliet retellings but this one hit the mark! I loved the witches and the boss women that Olivie wrote.

New York's magical underworld is dominated by two families. Lazar Federov, known as Koschei the Deathless, runs his shadowy empire with his sons Dimitri, Roman and Lev. More wholesome is Marya Antonova, known as Baba Yaga, and her seven daughters -- the eldest is Marya (Masha), the youngest is Sasha, the others are less distinctive -- and their trade in magical intoxicants. For over a decade an uneasy detente has been in place, but one family has broken the pact, and this means ... well, if not actually war, at least a bloody feud. Except that Koschei's sons and Baba Yaga's daughters are entangled in ill-starred ways...

'One for my Enemy' riffs off Romeo and Juliet (the chapter headings are quotations from the play) as well as Russian folklore and American mafia tales. Add magic, and everything becomes a great deal more complex. Characters are slain; characters are resurrected. Deals are made and broken. Loyalties are tested to breaking point. And the past is never truly past: Dimitri's teenage romance with Masha, Lev's accidental affair with Sasha, both echo the mistakes of their parents.

I'd have liked this a lot more if it hadn't been quite so focussed on emotional complexity -- between lovers, between parent and child, between siblings. Blake often tells us the different layers (spoken, unspoken, implicit) of a conversation, but there's much less detail about the setting, about the characters' physical appearance (mentioning someone's berry-coloured lipstick does not suffice, even if you do it repeatedly), and about the magical mechanics. I've enjoyed Blake's 'Atlas' novels, but this feels hollower, less cohesive. And it could be set anywhere: there's nothing here that, for me, evokes New York City more than, say, fair Verona.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 20 April 2023: it's actually been out since last year, but this is a sumptuously-illustrated new edition.

Unfortunately I was unable to read this book beyond the 20% mark due to the formatting. Words with 'ff', 'fl,' 'fi', etc letter combinations were missing these letters and thus fragmented and required too much puzzling out to allow for the reading the be enjoyable. Further sporadic interjections of numbers and breaking up of words just made the text unpleasant to parse. I had to give up at less than a quarter through the book as it became too much of a chore to try to figure out what was going on, and I realised I was not actually taking in any of the story.

From what I did gather, the story seemed a rather predictable retelling of the Romeo & Juliet tale. I'm not sure this would have been my cup of tea, even if I had been able to slog through the text.

I will keep my review to NetGalley only, as the formatting issues relate only to the ARC version of the book.

I got serious romeo and juliet vibes all the way through this book and I loved every minute of it. What I enjoyed was that it didn't just focus one two main characters and a plotline around them, there were multiple plotline intertwined and it made up a bigger story.
Very well written and such a heart wrenching ending!
Now I need to go read the authors other books.

Firstly thank you NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for sending me a copy of this book for review!

Olivie Blake is becoming something of an auto buy author for me. I love the Atlas Six series so far, and Alone With You In The Ether was just heart achingly lovely.

One For My Enemy was tragic, and wonderful, and raw. The different love stories of each character (because yay, multiple pov!), the different kinds of love and hunger and how it affects your choices. The growth of particular characters in this book was just 🤌🏻

Loved the overarching Romeo and Juliet vibes with the warring families and star-crossed lovers. Loved the interwoven tales of Koschei and Baba Yaga. Many things you'd expect, and many you definitely don't, this book keeps you on your toes. Oh, did I mention they're witches?!

I'm always gripped by Olivie's writing. It's so fluid and thought provoking, and very very highlightable!! She has a style that draws you in, even during the slower more detailed scenes you never actually feel bogged down by words because they just have this lovely flow.

As a one and done standalone story this neatly wrapped everything up, however I would have loved the chance to get to know the rest of the Antonova sisters better!

Overall, another great addition to my growing Olivie collection 👀 now you'll have to excuse me whilst I impatiently await the next (Masters of Death is happily on preorder) I have also just bought her YA romance so maybe I'll give that a read soon 👀

'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.