Review: These Hollow Vows by Lexi Ryan

Book Summary

Brie hates the Fae more than anything and wants to forget they even exist. But when her little sister is sold to the king of the Unseelie court to pay a debt, she’ll do anything to get her back. This means making a deal with this cruel king and stealing three magical relics from the Seelie court. While it’s easy to get to the Seelie court, the only reason she has to stay is to give herself as a potential bride for the prince.

Only, Prince Ronan isn’t who he seems and Brie is torn between hating his kind and falling in love with him. But at the same time, Brie spends time with some Unseelie outcasts who have an agenda of their own. She can’t help but be drawn to their mysterious leader Finn.

Nothing is simple when it comes to Fae and Brie has to be careful when getting involved in their games. Never trust a Fae, especially with your heart.

1. How did you feel about the characters overall?

We had mixed reviews about the characters. While everyone liked These Hollow Vows, not everyone liked Brie. Some thought she was a smart badass who had to deal with a lot of crap. Others found her to be annoying and whiny.

As for Prince Ronan, most thought Brie should be with him. While none of us trusted him completely, we have high hopes for his redemption in These Twisted Bonds.

Most of us are curious about Finn and want to know more about his backstory. While we did learn a lot about him near the end of the story, we’re curious about his character arc overall.

2. What made the book’s setting important to the overall story?

While many books talk about the Seelie and Unseelie courts, what made this story unique was that all humans know Fae exist. We all agreed that if vicious Fae exist, we wouldn’t want to know about them. It makes the humans live in fear.

Most of the book takes places in the Seelie court, which gave us The Cruel Prince meets The Selection vibes. Prince Ronan wants to find a wife and he does have similarities with Prince Cardan and Maxon. Obviously, the plot of story wouldn’t work unless Brie visited Seelie and Unseelie courts because those settings play a huge role.

We do think Ryan was very successful with her world building. She did a great job of introducing her interpretation of the world.

3. What would you like to see in book 2, These Twisted Bonds?

We all agreed that we’d like to see more action in These Twisted Bonds. We have a feeling this will start to get more intense between certain characters. Usually books with Fae have wars so that’s we’re anticipating.

We also are curious about how the love triangle will be handled. We hope it’s believable and slowburn. These characters have made many mistakes and we hope redemption is handled well. We do have our suspicions on who is endgame, but we can’t be totally sure.

4. How did you feel about the ending?

Without giving too much away, the ending gave us some big surprises. We disagreed with how Brie handled the situation with her sister. However, we liked the twists about Brie, her heritage and her romance. Prince Ronan and Finn both had their secrets as well.

These Hollow Vows ended on a cliffhanger, which shouldn’t surprise us because there’s a second book coming out this summer. We’ll be reading the next installment and can’t wait to see how the story progresses.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐