ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This is a weird one, because half of the hook (heist) didn't work for me, while the other half (vampires) kind of did? Maybe?

To me, the heist served more as a way to give us an elaborate introduction to the characters. We do get to see parts of the plotting, but not that much of it considering the supposed complexity of what they're trying to pull off. But because the book is multiple POV, we spend a lot of time with the heist crew. It's effective, but not very exciting, and I do kind of want that fun, "let's set everything up" part in a heist story.

The last 20% really ramps up, and it almost felt like I was reading a different book. I really enjoyed that part, and it got me hooked enough that I'll probably read the sequel, but it does have a few things that irked me or fall into my personal pet peeves.

The first one is the love V between Arthie, Matteo, and Laith. Yep, still hate the trope, and this version of it is no exception.

The second is the overuse of pet names. Matteo, Laith, and Jin all call Arthie and Flick by different pet names. I'm not sure there was a conversation between these characters (other than the ones between Arthie and Jin) that didn't include a variation of "dear", "darling", "sweet", "love", and, on Laith and Arthie's first meeting, "habibti". I did read an early review copy, so hopefully some of this will be edited out of the final version, because it was excessive enough that I started counting.

That said, I appreciated the world building, the nod at Excalibur, the commentary on colonialism, and the found family aspect.