Though I feel like it lacked in plot and world-building, The Angel of the Crows is entertaining enough to get you invested. (Actual rating 3.5)

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The Angel of the Crows is a good read! Did it blow me away as I hoped it would? No. Was it entertaining? Definitely! Did I get invested with the characters? Oh, yes.

As a whole, the story was entertaining. But I’m going to be honest and say that it has no real or main plot. Maybe the part about Jack the Ripper was supposed to be the bigger picture in the story, but it felt disjointed. It also wasn’t fleshed out for me (or maybe I was just looking for closure since Jack the Ripper was never caught in real life and I wanted to see how the author will go about it). The whole book is a series of different cases taken by Doyle and Crow, and we see them meet various people and creatures and solve one problem after another. For me, this allowed the book to be character-focused. It’s not exactly character-driven per se (since there were various sub-plots that moved the story forward), but as a reader, I was able to focus on the characters and get to know them. I adored Doyle and Crow as individual characters, and I also loved their tandem! (I also keep seeing gay subtext between, but that could just be me.)

As for the world-building, oh how I craved for it. It was good, but I wanted more! Details about the other creatures are vague and lacking. There was enough background about angels, but as for the others, no.

To my surprise, there’s also LGBTQ+ rep in The Angel of the Crows.

Doyle was assigned female at birth, and said he’s neither a man or a woman in the later part of the book (I presume this is in regards to his gender identity). Crow is also an asexual being, considering he is an angel and angels feel no sexual attractions. It was also stated that angels can be both male and female.

Though it was nice to see these representations, I feel like the author could have expounded more on it.

The author also said in the Author’s Note, that this story began as a Sherlock wingfic. Now, I’m not a fan of Sherlock Holmes (because I’ve never read the book, watched the movies, or anything), but I am very familiar with fanfics (as a fanfic reader myself!) and it was another pleasant surprise for me! Wingfics are fanfictions where characters (usually human) are reimagined with wings. I thought it was great that the author managed to create this story from what was once a fanfic. On the other hand, this also made me understand others’ sentiments about this book being a Sherlock “retelling”.

Overall, The Angel of the Crows is wonderful read. And if you feel like this book will suck you in, please read it!

(This review was first published on Enthralled Bookworm.)

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