CAWPILE added on reread, Feb 2022. Full review still below:

Character - 10
Atmosphere - 10
Writing - 10
Plot - 10
Intrigue - 9
Logic - 9
Enjoyment - 10

Rating: 9.71 / 5 stars

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Full review available March 29th on my blog: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/03/29/malice/

Thanks to Del Rey for the ARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.

Trigger Warnings: self harm (for the purposes of doing magic), past human experimentation, past mental and physical abuse, consent issues, death, murder, manipulation, torture, drug use.

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I’m going to try and pull together a coherent review, instead of the gushing and screaming I want to do about this book. I already can’t wait for book two, and Malice isn’t even out yet. Once I got started on this one, I couldn’t stop reading.

Alyce is the shining star of this book. We all know I adore a villain, and Alyce is sheer perfection. Her character arc was so consistent throughout the entire book, which isn’t always easy in a morally grey character. I loved that she was hugely relatable. I knew that the things she was doing was wrong, but her reasoning was so crystal clear and understandable that I didn’t care that what she was doing was wrong. There’s a delicate balance to be had there, and Walter absolutely nailed it. Her behaviour devolves throughout the book, leading to an ending that while shocking enough to get an actual audible gasp out of me, still felt in character. Her previous behaviour was telling me exactly what would happen – and I just liked the character so much I chose to ignore it until the very end.

I could not possibly talk about this book without rhapsodising about Alyce and Aurora. I love them. I loooove them. They have this incredible slow burn relationship that builds so naturally that I fell in love alongside them. I’m usually, to be brutally honest, incredibly critical of relationships in fiction but Alyce and Aurora just felt pitch perfect. The way that they talked to each other and treated each other made my heart ache. Both wanted to be ‘normal’, and to be treated like they were nobodies – not the Princess and the Dark Grace – and that made me yearn for them to succeed. (It also made me yearn to read a dozen AU fanfics of these two, but that’s besides the point). They just work together, and I think Walter absolutely nailed it. I want every sapphic I know to read this book, because the hopeless sapphic energy is perfect.

I think the use of the retelling was really cleverly done. I’m a huge fan of retellings, but I’ve been disappointed often by the way it’s incorporated. Not so here. The recognisable elements were threaded through the story really well, with call backs to the Sleeping Beauty legend and moments that echoed the familiar tale. But equally Malice was a super fresh and exciting retelling, with the addition of the Grace system (fascinating), and the remixed curse.

I did feel like the worldbuilding was a little slow at points. It was very full and vivid, with everything a reader could need to know to understand what was happening, and the Grace system of magic was so interesting, but I did find that in moments it was a little overly descriptive and I got a bit bogged down by it all. It didn’t falter my enjoyment though, and I can’t wait for the sequel to find out what could possibly follow that ending.