Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 21, 2023 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
The Witch and the Vampire is a YA novel marketed as a "queer Rapunzel retelling" featuring a witch and a vampire (hence the title). I'd honestly forgotten about this marketing in the months between getting this book and reading it, and well...I have to say the marketing is incredibly misleading: there's little in this book that reminded me of Rapunzel at all. Instead you have a YA story here featuring two female protagonists -Ava, a root witch turned vampire trying to escape to freedom and her former best friend Kaye, a flame witch whose mother was killed by a vampire and has trained her whole youth to hunt and kill them...both for the good of humanity and for revenge. The story features a chase between the two protagonists until naturally they have to work together to stay alive in a dangerous forest, where they each discover surprising truths about the world and a romantic connection between themselves.
The result is a novel that's pretty to be honest rote by numbers and most readers, even younger YA readers (for whom this book might be appropriate, as there's no sexual content and the romance is limited to kissing) will see a lot of the twists coming. I'm also not super sure the romance worked for me - the book tries to pull a bit of a former best friends to romantic couple plotline wit the main protags and I'm not sure I really believed in the shift the book was trying to sell. That said, the story does work and the protagonists are easy to root for and care about and the book isn't very long, so readers are likely to have a fine time and aren't likely to be disappointed if they pick this up.
More specifics after the jump:
Plot Summary:
Two years ago, Ava, a young root witch, and Kaye a young flame witch were best friends, united by their part-foreign heritage, their mothers part of the governing Clarity Council, and their being ostracized from almost everyone else their age (other than their friend Tristan, another flame witch). Then two years ago Ava's mother Eugenia revealed herself to secretly have become a vampire and used her fangs to turn Ava into a vampire herself.
Since then Ava has been locked in her mother's tower, where her mother has fed on her root magic power to keep the other witches from finding out that Eugenia is no longer a witch, but a vampire. Even worse, when Eugenia is away, Ava's stepfather Zenos experiments on her by torturing her. And none of Ava's friends know she is there, as they've been told Ava was sent away to a foreign land. Ava is desperate to escape, especially when she knows that Eugenia has some plot to harm the witches and humans, perhaps by even lowering the barrier that holds the other vampires at bay. Her hope is to take advantage one day of her mother's absence to escape to find the Vampire Queen Casiopea, in whom she hopes she can find salvation.
Unbeknownst to Ava however, Kaye's mother was killed by a vampire around the same time Ava was turned and Kaye - who has spotted a bloody Ava in her tower window - believes Ava was responsible. Kaye has been desperately training as a flame witch to kill as many vampires as possible...preferably starting with Ava. So when Ava enacts her plan and manages to escape into the forest, Kaye comes chasing after, believing this is the perfect time for Kaye to get her revenge. But when danger in the forest forces Kaye and Ava to temporarily work together, it soon becomes clear that what Kaye and Ava know about the world of witches and vampires is not quite accurate, and those discoveries may push them together closer than ever...if they don't get them killed first.
The Witch and the Vampire has a LOT of setup in the background, most of which never really comes into play (things involving the Emperor and his war against a foreign nation, Kaye's mom being a spy, etc). Instead we have a pretty classic YA story dealing with alternating point of view characters - Kaye and Ava - both of whom are adversaries at the start due to circumstances breaking them apart and who naturally get closer together as the story goes on until a romance embarks between them. This is hardly a new story for the genre - whether in YA or LGBTQ or romance or SF/F or Vampire-esque fiction - and that's the case for a lot of this story - for example a twist involving one major authority figure in the story is so so classic that any reader will just be expecting it from the chapter that character is finally introduced. But while the Witch and the Vampire is kind of a "seen this before" story, it generally does a lot of things well.
Really that's the case of three major characters - our protagonists and third character Tristan. Ava for example is a character who is really easy to root for as she struggles with her need for freedom and her biological craving for blood, and what that craving might say about her. And then there's the fact that her enemy is her mother, whom she wants to love, and the fact that her vampirism makes her clearly persona non grata to the witches she grew up with, even her former best friend in Kaye. Kaye meanwhile is the girl with a half-foreign background who is ostracized for her mom's peaceful ways (her mom wanted to try to make peace with the Vampires) and her mom's possible treason, and who now feels so alone after her mom's death, Ava's disappearance, and their friend Tristan growing seemingly cold to her. It's easy to understand why she struggles and why she tries to become a loner who can kill vampires, and her confusion when Ava challenges her assumptions. And then there's Tristan, who is honestly the biggest surprise in this entire book. You expect him to become the rival to Kaye, the one who winds up in a conflict with her over Ava or their parents or just being a better vampire killer, but Tristan behaves differently than you'd expect from the setup as compared to other novels, has justification from turning cold towards Kaye that is actually legitimate, and he works so much better and makes this book far more original because of it.
That said, I did find that the Ava/Kaye romance didn't quite land for me. The book sets them up as former best friends in a non romantic fashion, although they did have one possible moment of spark very briefly mentioned. It then tries to convert them from best friends to romantic partners (not lovers - we never get anywhere near sex in this book so it really can work for younger YA readers) but the shift in that attraction just feels abrupt and not really natural? There's a version of this book where there's no romantic connection between them at all and I think it doesn't take much change to make that version, which makes me wonder if that was the original intention...but any way, the version we get never does more than going through some pretty basic motions with its romance. It's not a bad romance and the two characters have chemistry, so the book works, just not as well as it might've if it really worked.
Basically, The Witch and the Vampire is a pretty basic YA Fantasy story with a romance included that largely hits the expected plot beats, with one surprise character plotline, and two main characters who are relatable and enjoyable, even if their romance didn't quite land. It's a book that YA readers will probably enjoy but will also probably forget not long after reading.
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