This Vicious Grace

by Emily Thiede. Pub Date 6/28/2022

4 Stars. Pub Date 6/28/2022

Publisher’s Synopsis:

Three weddings. Three funerals. Alessa’s gift from the gods is supposed to magnify a partner’s magic, not kill every suitor she touches.

Now, with only weeks left until a hungry swarm of demons devours everything on her island home, Alessa is running out of time to find a partner and stop the invasion. When a powerful priest convinces the faithful that killing Alessa is the island’s only hope, her own soldiers try to assassinate her.

Desperate to survive, Alessa hires Dante, a cynical outcast marked as a killer, to become her personal bodyguard. But as rebellion explodes outside the gates, Dante’s dark secrets may be the biggest betrayal. He holds the key to her survival and her heart, but is he the one person who can help her master her gift or destroy her once and for all?

Thoughts:

This Vicious Grace was full of fantastic and varied characters that both supported and deterred Alessa on her journey toward fulfilling her purpose as a Finestra, the protector of her island home. Her place in the beginning is very lonely. Usually, she would have been married near the beginning of coming into her power, but acting as what is essentially a megaphone for her Fonte (her partner’s) power. Every so many years, there is an invasion of what basically amount to Giant Beetles From Hell that threaten the people of the ocean communities in which they live. However, Alessa’s power seems to work tenfold to what her various predecessors did, and her touch draws an immense amount of power from her Fontes. She has killed three already, and there are certain factions that are feeling like maybe she is an abomination. If she were to be deemed an abomination, she would have to be killed in order for a new Finestra to be created to take her place. However, Alessa finds a strange ally in Dante, who doesn’t seem to succumb to her touch in the same ways as most people, meaning he doesn’t die almost immediately from her drawing all of his power immediately. There’s a good reason for it, but I don’t want to give it away. She decides to hire Dante as her bodyguard, and because he can touch her and vice versa, they begin training with one another and he helps her to control her powers. This is great, because the day of reckoning is fast approaching when the entire civilization of her island home will be counting on her and her Fonte to succeed. It’s especially good to have control as there are many potential Fontes in the running, and she needs to find one FAST if she’s going to keep everyone alive.

My favorite part of this book was the found family aspect that comes later in the book. The romance was also great. The plot, however? It was a steady underlying pulse that slowly ramped up into a mystery. Something really big is happening and it’s possible that the powers of the Finestra are just a symptom.

I’m super excited to read the sequel to this one. It left so many unanswered questions and I want more of Alessa and Dante’s story.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advance copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.