This Ravenous Fate was sort of a mixed bag for me--the romance really worked and I always love vampires, but because I really love vampires, and historical fiction, and especially queer vampire historical fiction, this book could've been such a good win for me and it was extra disappointing that this wasn't the case.

The strongest point of the book was absolutely the romance between Elise and Layla, and I found them both really compelling as characters! I was really rooting for these two young women even in their very different situations. Their dynamic of back-and-forth and slowly growing to trust each other again really worked for me. And of course since it's a vampire book, there HAD to be some homoerotic blood-drinking, and literally those were the most vivid, compelling scenes in the entire book for me and absolutely delivered on everything I dreamed of. I also really enjoyed the interesting conflicts between vampires and humans and the background of gang violence and the seedy underbelly of the city.

I think what didn't really work for me in this book were the character motivations, especially when it came to the antagonists. Like... it was so obvious the whole time who the villains were, and I couldn't quite understand how that kept going over the protagonists' heads.

In particular, I didn't really understand Valeria's role in the ending like at all??? She seemed so interesting, but it just didn't really feel like we actually explored her enough for me to understand why she was doing what she was doing or feel like that twist really made sense. Also I was consistently confused about Mr. Saint's deal, first he made it so clear he wanted to eradicate the reapers, so why would Elise ever believe him about wanting to make a cure??? He just wasn't very interesting and felt sort of one-note on the whole. The same is true for Sterling; it seemed like he went from being Elise's best friend and often viewing first-hand how cruel her father was to her, to suddenly completely siding with her father and refusing to listen to her without really any exploration of this shift at all. Also, it seemed so obvious to me that the reapers were being intentionally driven to violence in order to turn the city against them and eradicate them, right from the beginning. This twist being clear isn't a bad thing in and of itself, I just wish Layla and Elise actually spent more time speculating on this mystery, trying to put the pieces together, or even just talking about it instead of just jumping from one plot beat to the next so quickly.

This last note is moreso my personal preference than a real critique, but I do just wish this book felt more like historical fiction. There were some scenes where the vibrancy of the Harlem Renaissance really shone through, mostly in the description of the dance clubs, but I felt like the prose and setting didn't really deliver on genuinely feeling like the past enough, especially for such an interesting time period! I wish there was more inclusion of, like, historical speech and what daily life looked like in this time period to really draw me into the book's historical elements. Also, I would've loved more detail about Elise and Layla's relationship to their sexualities. Not that this needs to be the main focus of the book or anything, but even a few nods to how they view themselves or if the norms are different for humans vs reapers would've helped to clarify this--the closest we get is a joke about a very heterosexual "oh what good friends :)" response from Elise's mom (which I did find funny!) and I just would've loved more nuanced worldbuilding around this, just as the type of reader I am. This is especially true because Harlem at this time had what we'd consider today a thriving queer community with unique spaces and ways of being for the time, and I just feel like the girls' sexualities were really glossed over rather than explored.

That might sound like a lot of criticisms for a 3 star book, but I really did enjoy This Ravenous Fate overall! It just could have been a five star, so I put a lot of thought into figuring out why this wasn't the case. I do think this is a strong debut with some fantastic characters! Just that the plot side of things could've been much stronger.