Hello, Book Nerds! Welcome back to Reading Has Ruined My Life or welcome if you are new. As always, my name is Hannah and I am your captain on this journey into my bookcase.
Before I get to today’s book, I have a shout out I must give. Wyoming! Thank you! Reading Has Ruined My Life is nearly four years old and I’ve never gotten to mark Wyoming off my analytics map. Until today. Wyoming, thank you for reading. I now have readers in all 50 states. Thank you for tuning in.
I’m back at ya today with the ending to the All Of Us Villains duology! I got my grubby, little claws on All Of Our Demise by Amanda Foody and C.L. Herman and dove in right away. I needed closure. I needed answers. I needed magical Hunger Games energy. And damn, did I get it.
Intro over. It’s time to crack into it. I need to talk about this glorious read. As always, a spoiler alert is in order. If you’ve read any other review of mine then you know I simply love spoiling the books I read. I also have a trigger and content warning as well. All Of Our Demise makes mentions of various forms of abuse. These topics were more prevalent in All Of Us Villains but they are brought up again in All Of Our Demise and are still relevant to the plot. There are also some scenes involving torture. Yeah, it’s not pretty. It will make your skin crawl; mine most certainly did. Violence and gore are pretty heavily talked about in this story if you hadn’t guessed. With that, let’s get to the synopsis.
Our story begins where All Of Us Villains left off. Alistair is on a quest for vengeance with his ghostly brother Hendry. Briony and Finley are determined to break the curse. Isobel is a little tied up in Reid’s shop, but she has a plan to escape and team up with Briony and Finley. And that leaves Gavin, our wildcard.
To make a long book quick, Isobel gets out of her situation, takes Reid with her, teams up with Briony and Finley, and Reid messes up the tournament more by becoming a champion. He does eventually team up with the trio to safely dismantle the tournament. Gavin manages to team up with Alistair and Hendry. Their plan is to take out the other champions because they don’t believe the curse can be broken. Plus, Alistair wants to save his brother and dismantling the tournament means losing Hendry forever.
For quite a long time these two groups fight against each other. There will be bloodshed, despite some people trying to prevent that. There will also be romance, torture, tragic backstories, more romance, magical fights, double crossing/double agents, and even more romance. What if I told you there were multiple enemies-to-lovers romances in this one…? Well, more like rivals-to-lovers but imma pretend it’s enemies-to-lovers.
Anyway, will our heroes manage to end the curse? Will they all survive? Will the two groups take each other out leaving the rest of the world to lose their shit over the high magic up for grabs? Will outside forces kill the champions instead? So many questions. Learn the answers in All Of Our Demise.
I devoured this book. I was ready. I was waiting. I was only ever so slightly disappointed in it. I had a grand ole time for the majority of the read. We’ll start with the characters again. Truthfully, I didn’t see tons of character growth. I know lots of other readers do, but I personally don't. To me, everyone was still dimensional, but everyone was so crushed by the reality of the situation they were in that the characters were simply at their lowest and the rest of the novel was everyone’s mood being lifted slowly by hope over time.
The only character I thought had a major arc was Alistair. He’s definitely the main main character of this series and it really shows in All Of Our Demise. In All Of Us Villains, he’s been burned many times before the start of the novel and finds it difficult to trust anyone save for his brother. Then Isobel comes into his life. They have their alliance, their relationship turns to lovers status, and she then betrays him; Alistair wasn’t a trusting person to begin with, so when book one ends he’s basically built a stone wall around him to keep everyone on the face of the planet out thanks to the tournament. It’s a great set up for his character arc in book two where Gavin slowly manages to break through Alistair’s wall and become friends, and something more than friends, with our wannabe edgelord. Alistair isn’t forced to trust his new alley, and he certainly doesn’t when their alliance first starts, but he learns to trust Gavin. He trusts Gavin through his own accord. The growth shows.
Everyone else though? The growth and arcs are fairly minimal. Everyone basically learns to trust as well, but none of these arcs have the same gravitas as Alistair’s does.
Now let’s turn to the plot. The plot, and in turn the story’s conclusion, did not hold the same magic for me as All Of Us Villains did. Don’t get me wrong, I still liked the story, but I kinda guessed what was going to happen. If you remember the end of my All Of Us Villains review, you’ll know I left two predictions on what I thought would occur. I was right on both counts. I can’t help but feel a tad disappointed. I’m a little unsatisfied with this novel’s plot. It dragged out a little too much at points.
I also call bullshit on the True Love’s Kiss deus ex machina that occurs at the climax of the story. It comes out of nowhere, there’s nothing to support its inclusion, not even a little breadcrumb at the beginning of the novel, and comes across as lazy writing more than anything else. I do not support its inclusion.
All Of Our Demise is still a solid end to the duology. It answers all the questions I had, the story and writing is decent, all the parts of the first entry that I loved are in the sequel, but I didn’t want to stay up all night reading like I did with All Of Us Villains. I think All Of Our Demise simply suffers from sequel syndrome. This book is good, just not as good as the first.
With that, I must bid you all adieu. I hope you enjoyed your time here today, and enjoyed the last review of the year. I shall see you again next week with the final post of 2023.
Until then, stay safe, wash your hands, and read some good books for me.
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