*Trigger Warnings: book contains violence, depictions of alcoholism, the death of children, depiction of mental health struggles*

Two girls, a monster on the loose, and a town full of secrets. Marie and Ama are sisters, both of them are monsters in very different ways. While Ama turns into a beasts and kills, Marie marks and picks who is to be killed. Marie works hard to hide her sister’s secret while living in a small 18th century French town. However, it is getting harder and harder to hide when more dead children start showing up and people become paranoid about hunting down a beasts. The entire incident start after Marie and Ama’s father sold Ama to the town’s lord’s home to work as a maid.... except the lord and lady died and Ama returned home newly cursed with the ability to turn into a beasts and a bloodlust. Marie knows that Ama is delving closer and closer to the beast’s side and so decides that this is her only chance to find a cure for her sister. She pretends to know a cure to the current Lord Sebastian (a boy around her age, 17ish)’s younger brother Lucien ( a child) who suffers from consumption and infiltrates the household convinced that Sebastian’s mother was the one who cursed her sister and that there is a spell book she can use to undue it. But time is running out for Marie, as more dead bodies show up and her lies start piling up and the town is on the hunt for Ama. Now she must find a solution before everyone is at stake and she loses everything, including her feelings for Sebastian.

This story definitely fits into the gothic fairytale type. No one is truly good and everyone is a little bit messed up.

Spoiler

Ama literally kills people and eats them without feeling any remorse and thinks of it as a game while Marie brushes it off as killing “vagrants, travelers, and criminals” and essentially poisoned Lucien in order to manipulate Sebastian while Sebastian was keeping his sort of dead mom in the house and knew about Ama and Marie being cursed while Marie and Ama’s dad literally sold off his own daughter and was negligent, took money from them, and essentially left them to fend for themselves while he got drunk. The only actual likable character was Lucien, he didn’t deserve what was happening to him at all.

The romance between Marie and Sebastian seemed a bit off kilter for me considering the situation going on and I just couldn't find the chemistry between the two of them. Overall an okay read with an interesting take gothic fairytales. The characters are all morally grey as Marie was willing to do whatever to save her sister despite her sister being a beasts and killing and eating people while Sebastian was willing to do whatever to save his brother. The story wraps up everything neatly though and was an okay read.

*Thanks Netgalley and ABRAMS Kids for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*