Title: These Hollow Vows
Author: Lexi Ryan
Genre: Fantasy, fantasy romance
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication Date: 2021
Format: Audiobook
Length: 13 hours

Rating:

I’m a little bit picky about the YA fiction I read, especially when it comes to fantasy. I love the complicated world-building and complex dynamics that more often come with adult fantasy novels and have found in the past that sometimes in the YA genre, I just don’t get the depth that I’m looking for. There are, of course, many exceptions to this—some of my favourite series are YA, and I rave about them pretty often on this blog. Perhaps it’s unfair of me, but I tend to look more critically at a YA book before I start it, to make sure that it will align with my reading preferences.

Mostly for these reasons, I was hesitant about buying These Hollow Vows by Lexi Ryan, despite the amazing things I’d heard. The tropes all sounded like things I’d enjoy, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to pull the trigger and buy a physical copy right away. I borrowed it from my library in audiobook format instead though, and I’m SO glad that I did because it really exceeded my expectations. It took a while for the book to ramp up, and the narrator for the audiobook voiced all characters which took some getting used to, but once there was some momentum, I couldn’t stop listening. I ended up finding this book thoroughly enjoyable and will definitely be picking up book two.

Fair warning: spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t read this book.

The Book: These Hollow Vows by Lexi Ryan

These Hollow Vows begins by introducing the main character Abriella (Brie), a human who is an exceptional thief, in the midst of a heist. Brie and her sister have been forced into servitude by their greedy, wealthy aunt who their mother left them with when she abandoned them as children. Her aunt demanded that Brie and her sister pay her to stay in the tiny, windowless concrete room she confines them to and each time they miss a payment, she added enough interest to their total debt to cripple them financially. Brie is attempting to steal enough gold from a wealthy brothel owner so that they can make their monthly payment to her, but despite her success in the heist, she finds herself unable to use the money she’s stolen as a good friend of hers is in trouble and needs the money instead. This is a perpetual cycle among the poor it seems, who simply cannot ever come up with enough money to raise themselves beyond their circumstances.

Because Brie has chosen to help her friend, it means she isn’t able to make her payment to her aunt. She assumes this will mean that her aunt will simply add more interest to their total, but instead, her aunt opts to sell her sister into slavery with the Unseelie Fae King without telling Brie. This launches Brie into a desperate quest to find her sister and return her home safely. Her best friend Sebastian, a mage in training who lives next door, tries to persuade her not to do this as the Fae are dangerous, but Brie promptly ignores him and enters the Fae kingdom anyway.

In Brie’s attempt to infiltrate the Seelie court, she finds herself pretending to be a potential bride to the Seelie prince, who actually turns out to be Sebastian. Brie is devastated and hurt to find that her best friend had lied to her for years about his true identity, and as her perception of the fae has never been positive, she no longer feels she knows him.

She ends up teaming up with the exiled Unseelie prince in an attempt to meet the terms of the Unseelie King that would see him return her sister to her safely. In her efforts to save her sister, she’ll grow bonds with both of the princes and have her life and views of the world completely torn apart as she tries desperately to do whatever is needed to get her sister back.

The Review

This book took a while to ramp up for me. There are some really interesting elements of magic at the start, particularly in terms of Brie’s abilities, but the set-up felt very familiar, like a combination of Cinderella and A Court of Thorns and Roses, so I found myself just waiting to see which direction things would fall in. I also initially found Brie to be pretty whiny, but I think this might have just been the narrator on the audiobook, because in time I found her much more interesting and endearing.

Speaking of the narrator, I found the narration style was something I had to get past before I could start really enjoying the book. The narrator was a female voicing all characters, and I’ll say the male voices she used initially felt kind of ridiculous. I also thought it was weird that some characters seemed to have English accents and others didn’t, but once I stopped overthinking it and just focused on the actual narrative, the whole story got a lot better for me.

While in some ways, because of the tropes playing out, I felt like I could see where the plot was headed, the direction surprised me in places. Some of these surprises were because Brie was such a strong-willed, morally grey character. She cared for those around her, but that affection only extended so far, because, in the end, she was willing to do literally whatever it took to save her sister. I ended up respecting that about her, that she didn’t cave at any point for the sake of her own feelings or safety. She was genuinely willing to sacrifice her entire future and her relationships if it meant that her sister would be safe.

I also think there was a lot of really good set-up for the second book in the duology. With Finn for example, I feel like Ryan barely scratched the surface. It’s obvious there’s a lot more to him, and I kept waiting for it to come to light but she left it really open for book two. The ending was pretty explosive as well, and while I won’t go into detail to save on any spoilers, I am VERY keen to see what happens with Sebastian and with Brie as she comes into her power.

I flopped back and forth between whether or not this was a 3-star or 4-star read for me because how I’m feeling about it at the end is different from how I felt for the first half. In the first half, I was more inclined to guess it would have only been a 3-star, but honestly, I literally could not stop listening to probably the last third. My house has never been cleaner because I was looking for any excuse to throw my headphones in and listen to just one more chapter. Because of this, I’m settling on 4 stars. That addictive, can’t-put-it-down quality is so fleeting and I’m always chasing it, and it’s made me super excited to get to the final book in this duology.