Art of Death
Becca Vincenza
(Curse Breakers, #1)
Publication date: September 4th 2018
Genres: New Adult, Urban Fantasy
Rating: 4 stars
What if a single act of rebellion had the power to change your fate?
Rowan and Abel Hayes’ birth ended a centuries-old family curse, but being a curse breaker has its drawbacks. Now they live a life full of rules.
When Rowan breaks a rule, she sets a powerful chain of events into motion that she never could’ve imagined. Abel is kidnapped, and it’s up to Rowan to save her twin. Can she rely on the aid of an old friend who once betrayed her? Or will new enemies prove too strong for her to handle?
(New Adult, contains language and sexual content. 18+)
REVIEW
Art of Death by Becca Vincenza is a pretty standard-fare urban fantasy. Necromancers are gaining ground as a popular magical “breed” and the ever-present werewolf who is showing distinct signs of being mated, meanwhile the FMC (who grew up around shifters) is oblivious. The FMC has a case of pridefully stupid so bad, the whole story is based off of it. She is redeemably resourceful for getting out of the trouble she causes, but listening to people with more experience and knowledge would create a total lack of any story. While it’s not terribly innovative or new, it’s a trope that seems to survive and do well.
All-in-all, it’s a pretty good story. The storyline moves at a decent pace and the characters are fairly consistent. It flows smoothly, though there is a lot of information dumped in a seemingly haphazard fashion. Any time the plot slows down, Vincenza takes the opportunity to try to cram more backstory into the reader’s head. It’s vaguely annoying because the information is useful, but it definitely is an info-dump and frequently is only vaguely related to what is actually happening in the story. Vincenza opens with just throwing the reader into the deep end, so I really hoped the story would continue in that vein. However, it is in first person POV, so I guess it was inevitable that the author go with what’s rambling through the FMC’s head instead of giving a more thorough description of the environment or simply skipping ahead to the next point that something important happens.
Basically, if the style of writing weren’t so engaging, this would be a solid 3 stars–it’s a basic, but readable story that makes use of a lot of popular tropes that tend to annoy me. However, it IS engaging and it DID hold my interest, so that elevates it to a 4 star. I just wish we had something other than a pridefully stupid FMC and a cliche of a love interest to go with the action and intrigue of Vincenza’s take on necromancers. I’d love to see her take on an FMC that was truly strong and not just out to see how many times she can commit suicide by pride.
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Author Bio:
Becca Vincenza lives in *wonderful* Michigan. For a passion of all things paranormal and adventure, she writes both in Urban Fantasy worlds, and Paranormal Romance. When she isn’t writing, she is reading and vice versa.
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