DNF at 27%

I will admit that it’s probably my own tastes/expectations that has me DNFing, but I figure that’s enough to do so.

What I was expecting from this story was for Rae to adopt that villainous aura from the character without making it seem so…cringy? A lot happens in the beginning in terms of introducing us to characters in the fantasy series while finding our footing in where Rae has ended up in the series, covering all the background of the fantasy story and trying to follow the plot of it in order to find the medicine that can cure Rae of her illness. Apart from Key, I didn’t really take any of the characters seriously, and although classed as an adult fantasy, I would say the tone of it reads more Disney-esque (think The Descendants) in terms of fulfilling the roles established for each character.

It’s a shame because the premise sounds fun (who doesn’t love an isekai story?), but the execution didn’t really do it for me

I absolutely loved Sarah Rees Brennan’s previous novel, In Other Lands, so I was so excited to read Long Live Evil! It more than lived up to my expectations! Of course, given the premise, Long Live Evil has great fun playing with and subverting genre tropes while adding lots of metatextual commentary about storytelling and fandom, which I really enjoyed. It’s also wittily written, full of great characters and a compelling, slow-burn romance. (Actually, more than one, as I have high hopes for two of my favourite supporting characters in the sequel! I’m rooting for you, Eric!) Brennan’s writing reminds me a little of Terry Pratchett’s. She has a wonderful ability to weave serious and heartfelt moments and themes into a fantasy setting and plot that glories in its (in this case) over-the-top Dark Fantasy tropes. Besides the courtly intrigue, interpersonal drama and unresolved sexual/romantic tension, this is a novel packed with creepy but disturbingly casual worldbuilding details and a few stand-out action scenes, including an actual zombie invasion.

Rae is a fantastic protagonist, not really evil but adept at playing to expectations and bluffing her way through any and all tricky situations. I loved how Brennan is able to switch between funny or endearingly catty wordplay or dialogue to making serious points and social commentary about, for example, the sexism of reducing female characters to Virgin or Vamp archetypes, epitomised by Rae’s Sexy Villainess/Evil Step-sister to Lia, the Heroine. This is a story that blows up stereotypes and explodes the constricting roles forced on women in traditional fantasy. For example, I loved watching Rae attempt to unionise her minions and have Complicated Feelings about Lia and her real life sister, Alice, to whom she’s fighting to return. Romance aside, complex sisterly relationships are at the heart of the novel, as they should be a story about an Evil Step-sister, as Rae and Alice, but also Rae/Rahela and Lia and Emer (the “Iron Maid,” Rahela’s axe-wielding henchwoman and quasi-sister) all compete to have the most complicated drama with each other. And I loved that, for once, in a fantasy romance novel, the pool of women competing over the royal male love interest actually take the time to ask themselves if he’s really worth the effort.

That said, the romance between Rae and Key had me hooked from the start with its surprisingly tender and sincere interactions in the context of the campy Villainess and minion dynamic. Brennan really excels at picking out small but compelling details and interactions that tug at the heartstrings and suck you in. I didn’t think I was a fan of the ‘Bad Boy,’ possibly-a-sociopath love interest who’s devoted to the main character and no one else, but I was shipping hard. I think fans of Mafia and traditional Dark Fantasy Romance would appreciate it too, and fans of smart, self-aware fantasy will enjoy everything else. For myself, I haven’t felt so immersed in a story for a long time, and I hated to leave Rae and Key and the others. As soon as I was finished, I was dying to read the sequel (and some fanfiction), which is the highest praise I could bestow on any book.

Long Live Evil by Saarah Rees Brennan was a delight as a book because Brennan is unique in their storytelling and style. It's refreshing and forging it's own path in the Romantasy/ Fantasy genre

There is such a delicious melding and flipping of characters and tropes, turing everything on its head. Whole at times I had to stop and read back (that's on me, not the writing) after adapting to the style, I became completely engrossed and dare I say obsessed by this book

A multitude of dichotomies are the foundation of this book and what an absolute joy they are to work through! A fantastic read and/ or listen for the spooky season and more!

Thank you to NetGalley, Little, Brown Book Group UK | Orbit and Sarah Rees Brennan for this excellent ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

A riot of a book!

I had so much fun with this one. The humour is top tier, the magic is so unique and what more could a bookworm want than a book within a book?!

This book was not at all what I was expecting but it was extremely entertaining and engaging throughout. It was heartfelt, out-there and downright ridiculous at times but these things added to it's overall charm and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I love how self-aware the villains and I appreciated how many common tropes were utilised in unexpected ways to make the story feel different.

This is my first book by this author and I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the series.

3.75 stars

This story was a laugh, completely out there and ridiculous in the best way, while also approaching the reality of battling cancer in a kind and open way. Rae, our main character is fighting cancer and finds herself speaking to a mysterious women who tells her she will live if she is able to find and retrieve a healing flower that blooms once every year within Rae's favourite book series. However when she wakes up in this fictional world, she wakes up as Lady Rahela, the villain, on the night of her execution. Rae was use what she knows from the books to get herself out of this predicament and retrieve the flower, luckily Rae loves a villain and knows how the story goes...ish!

I really enjoyed this, although the pacing was very slow at the start. However by the end I was hooked and look forward to see where it goes next.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

4.5 stars to this wildly fun book!!

I really didn't expect to love this as much as I did, but the characters dug their evil little claws in me and made me extremely invested! I loved how the story played around with common tropes and twisting them in such a fun way by making the characters be so aware of the fact that they're actually villains. Key especially was such a blast, and he was definitely my favourite!! Self aware villains are always so much fun, and this book did it wonderfully!

The focus on female relationships, both sisterly and friendships, was also done really well.

All in all, I had a blast with this book and I can't wait for book 2! Especially after that ending!!!

SCREAMING!! THIS BOOK is EVERYTHING.

It's clever, witty, layers of sarcastic humor, so many timelines and characters and collision of worlds. Such a unique concept to jump into a fantasy world of your favourite book! Loved it so much and had the best time reading it.

I cannot wait for book 2!

Thank you netgalley for this review. This book did not wow me as much as i expected. This was a nice middle ground of an enjoyable read but nothing too memorable

As I've got older, I think I've started to appreciate villains much more than I did when I was younger (ha ha!) and this book was the perfect read for someone like me. Great fun throughout!

I think that unfortunately I wanted to like this more than I ended up actually enjoying it. It’s silly and goofy and camp, and I loved the concept so much. There’s a lot of court intrigue, it’s twisty, and it’s a lot of fun. However, it did bring me physical pain and a lot of cringing when real world dialogue was brought into this medieval fantasy setting (dialogue that nobody IN the real world would ever actually say out loud, at that - with a character literally saying “A.F.” out loud. Just no), that musical number - I actually had to close the book for 5 minutes after reading that to get rid of the secondhand embarrassment. I did like the characters though - they’re all a bit unhinged and you don’t quite know what anyone’s going to do next, which is always fun! I also found the incorporation of terminal cancer into the storyline really interesting, particularly after reading the author’s note about Brennan’s own battle with cancer.

The style, plot and humour is so specific and unique that I definitely think this book will be divisive. in the book world! I don’t think everyone will like it. Less skit like than Assistant to the Villain and in someways as ‘tropey’ as powerless, but I do think if you like that you should like this. It’s very meta and breaks the fourth wall in a way, and I enjoyed it!

The book starts with the main character and her sister who love this book series and they have opinions on love interests and ship certain characters. But the main character gets sick and a mysterious women offers her the chance to go into the book and try her hand at getting the flower of life and death, which only blooms once a year. It's a very different read which is nice! It was funny and I enjoyed this one!

I will fully admit I had no hopes for this book going in. The summary is the exact type of cringe that straddles the line between ‘brilliant’ and ‘terrible’ and frankly, and I had no faith it would be the former. Still, I’ve grown up reading translated Asian isekai stories and I was really curious how a Western take on it would go. It almost didn’t.

Long Live Evil is a Western take on Eastern Villainess Isekai genre. For those unfamiliar, isekai (JP) (or isegye (KR)/chuanyue (CN)/transmigration) is a genre where a character finds themselves in the body of someone else and has to deal with the consequences. Oftentimes, they end up in the body of a fictional character and are either perma-stuck there or have to complete some objective to get out. As the name suggests, in villainess isekais the MC gets stuck in the body of the ‘villainess’ of a story, a character competing with the heroine the main love interest’s hand and have to figure out how to navigate themselves out of said position. Occasionally, this comes with constraints of being unable to act ‘Out Of Character’ (OOC). Now onto the story itself.

The first 10% of this book is DNF-ably bad. My god was it hard to read. The main character, Rae, embraces her villainess-era lifestyle with an uncomfortable gung-ho, dropping every villain-aesthetic cringe one-liner known to man. Every vaguely villain-sequence symbolism is embellished. I’ve seen someone on Goodreads describe it as the Taylor Swift-esque Repuation-era villainism and that’s uncomfortably spot on. I wouldn’t fault anyone for reading that first 10%, closing the book, and never opening it again for just how off-putting it was.

However, I told myself I would make it to at least 25% before calling it quits and I can’t tell if I love or hate myself for that. Around the 20% mark, we’re introduced to the best (and probably only tolerable) character of the entire book, the Golden Cobra. Who’s secretly, gasp, another transmigrator! He’s got this deliciously tortured love-hate enemies-but-not-really relationship with the world’s most Lan Wangji-coded character in Marius and it makes you want to scream ‘just kiss already!’. Really it was their antics and Marius’ “progressive for my time because I think women are capable of independent thought” mentality that really really carried this book and tempered Rae’s absolute insufferability.

I will give credit where credit is due. Sarah Rees Brennan, for all her faults of writing terrible POV characters, knows her craft. The plot of Long Live Evil is genuinely good. The story itself is incredibly compelling if you just kind of ignore Rae’s bullshit and the twists and turns it pulls you through as a Western take on the Isekai genre is shockingly well written. Brennan does humor really well and I found myself laughing quite a bit. Of course, then there’s moments like the musical chapter that I just had to skip entirely for my own sanity, but you win some you lose some.

Really, my only other complaint about this book and a warning to anyone else considering picking it up is that despite its cover, no one is actually a villain. Not even in a tongue-in-cheek manner. This is one of those, actually villains are just misunderstood people who have been demonized by people in power. And occasionally we like to wear blood red and brandish a knife around. I’m sorry. That’s boring as fuck. Let characters actually be evil!! Don’t be a coward!!!!!! Again, strong parallels to the Taylor Swift Reputation villain era of villainry

Overall, I rate a this book a 3.5/5. It would have been a 2 without Cobra, but also I would have DNFed without Cobra. The book is exactly what it says on the cover and this will be very much a love it or hate it novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group for the advance reader copy.

I was very excited to read this book and found that it didn’t live up to that expectation.
I found the over use of ‘young’ phrases and the info dumping took away from what I could imagine would be an interesting story and premise.

I unfortunately had to DNF this book and may come back to it at a later date.

I couldn't get through this one - the world building was infodumping and jarring and I just cannot figure out why I should either like or hate any of these characters to care about them one way or the other.

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me at 30%

Felt the dialogue was cringy and there were too many pop culture references for me personally.

The lowest I give a book I DNF is 3⭐️ as it’s hard to judge without reading the entire thing

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

'For anyone who has fallen in love with the villain' immediately sold!

This is a slow start but once it found it's stride I was drawn in. I found it really easy to read, even if the pacing was off. It was entertaining and I was laughing and giggling a lot throughout the book. The characters were enjoyable too but I think my favourite part of this was the sarcasm. I was thoroughly entertained with it which made up for the obvious plot twists. Now I won't say this is a brilliant book but I had a fun time with it. I was invested in the story and in the characters and overall had a blast.

This book was the most fun book i've ever read. It instantly fell in love with the characters, and Sarah Rees Brennan took us on a wild ride! I dont think i've read a book with this type of plot before; it was a different vibe and I absolutely loved it. I received a Fairyloot copy of Long Live Evil, and the cover is stunning.

I couldn't finish the book. The storyline did not make sense to me, the characters had no depth to them and the writing style just didn't appeal to me.

I've been waiting for this book since Leigh Bardugo mentioned it last year on her hell bent tour. And it did not disappoint I loved every single page of it