As a big fan of The Atlas Six, I was eager to read One For My Enemy. I look forward to making my way through all of Olivie Blake’s books, as I enjoy her plots, her characterisation, and her partnership with Little Chmura, who brings her characters to life with visual art. However, One For My Enemy was not as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be, falling a little flat in the places I was hoping it would shine.
Synopsis
When I come across a book that claims to be a retelling of or inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I can’t help myself. I must read it. So, having seen One For My Enemy by Olivie Blake (real name Alexene Farol Follmuth), I had high expectations. Not only was it a retelling of a tragic play I love, but it was a contemporary urban fantasy following incredibly powerful rival witch families in New York City as a twelve-year feud comes to a head. It follows both the Antonova sisters and their fearless mother Baba Yaga as they attempt to fight back against their biggest rival Koschei the Deathless and his sons, the Federov Brothers. The main point of the plot concerns whether love can help these families reach an end to the animosity between them.
Review
First, I want to start with what I enjoyed. In the beginning, the story was gripping, and the blossoming romance amidst the intensity of the Antonova and Federov worlds had me hooked. The romance was believable, the anger and betrayal experienced by the eldest siblings cutting and intense, and the setting just dark enough to match the novel’s tone. I enjoyed the inclusion of magic, and how each family used their magic differently, though it did appear that the magic was only there to serve the story rather than fit well into the world, which made it feel slightly out of place. What I enjoyed the most was Roma’s character arch. I’m a sucker for a character that does whatever they want, who seems to work in a way that is contrary to what everyone else does. Roma embodied this sentiment for me, and the journey that he goes through as the story unfolds is well done, making him one of my favourite characters in the book. I also liked a few of the side characters and appreciated what they brought to the story, especially those who did not have any magic of their own.
“Write me a tragedy, Lev Fedorov,” she whispered to him. “Write me a litany of sins. Write me a plague of devastation. Write me lonely, write me wanting, write me shattered and fearful and lost. Then write me finding myself in your arms, if only for a night, and then write it again…”
pg. 148 One For My Enemy by Olivie Blake
One of the problems I ran into with this book was that it felt long. Long books are not a problem, but when they start to drag, they become one. There was so much going on that it was almost too much, a lot of which was verging on similar. I can see that the intention was for the plotlines to mirror one another, as a cyclical, history repeating itself type of thing. But it felt too repetitive, like three couples were auditioning to play Romeo and Juliet and whoever pushed it the furthest would win. Then, there were a lot of plot points that felt too contrived and unbelievable, which ties into the questionable magic available to the Antonova witches which may or may not have included reincarnation. Some moments pulled me out of the story to ask, ‘How’, ‘Why’ or ‘Since when?’, which made the experience of reading One For My Enemy more difficult.
Another thing I did not quite enjoy as much as I thought I would was the writing style. At times, it felt overly complex and others too cliché, which did not seem to fit the setting even though it fit some of the characters. Their dialogue seemed a bit too grandiose at some points. The quote I included above is spoken by a modern-day teenager, which is immediately questionable, but it does encapsulate the mood of the novel, which is deep, heavy, tragic and melodramatic. Those aspects bothered me quite a bit and made a novel that could have been a full five-star read into a four-star read.
I do still recommend reading One For My Enemy if you’re looking for a Romeo and Juliet retelling or like Olivie Blake but be warned that you may not enjoy it as much as The Atlas Six or you may enjoy it more, because they seem to deliver very different things. Like most authors, Olivie Blake’s work seems quite divisive, with many people DNFing her books as they aren’t their cup of tea.
What do you think of Olivie Blake?
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