A Bargain so Bloody by Vasalisa Drake - Releasing June 30th, 2025
Review by Kodie Pohl
I recently started receiving advanced reader copies for books that are soon to be coming out, and one of the first ones I received was A Bargain So Bloody by Vasalisa Drake. I listened to this ARC as an audiobook, and the words had me gripped from the first sentence.
Overview:
A Bargain So Bloody starts off inside a witch prison and follows the main female character, Samara. She has been in prison for 12 years at this point and was sentenced to serve inside because she has no magic. Inside the prison, she is sent to tend to a vampire, which she has never done before. After finding out she might never leave the godforsaken prison, she makes a bargain with the vampire that she might never come back from…
My Review:
A Bargain So Bloody has been one of my all-time favorite books. I am so glad that I was sent to ARC to listen to. The flow of the book was amazing, and like I said before, my attention was grasped from the first sentence of the book and was held throughout until the end of the epilogue. Now that I am finished A Bargain So Bloody, I have so many questions and theories about what is going to happen next. There were so many twists and turns in this book that I did not see coming, and this is impressive since usually I can predict what is going to happen.
The last time I was this excited to read the next book in the series was when I read Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarrows. I would also love to say that the plotting and writing were great. There was plenty of description when it came to the magic system the the character’s world, especially when it came to the witches, vampires, and voids. I also thought it was very unique that their world has magic cards that can be used by those without magic.
Overall, I think A Bargain So Bloody is an amazing book, and I strongly recommend that you read it. It is the first book in the “Kingdom of Dark Magic” series and will be released on June 30th, 2025. This book had minimal “romance”, so this series will definitely be a slow burn, but well worth the wait in my opinion! This book would also be a great pick if you love tropes such as forbidden romance, “she’s mine”, touch her and die, haters to lovers to haters, and morally grey love interest.
I ended up rating A Bargain So Bloody five out of five stars and would urge any reader who loves fantasy to give it a chance.
Purchase A Bargain So Bloody here!
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