I am so excited to be joining Turn the Page Tours and Simon Teen for the blog tour of Margaret Rogerson’s third book, Vespertine! See below for all the details, including my review and a GIVEAWAY!

From the New York Times bestselling author of Sorcery of Thorns and An Enchantment of Ravens comes a thrilling new YA fantasy about a teen girl with mythic abilities who must defend her world against restless spirits of the dead.

The dead of Loraille do not rest.

Artemisia is training to be a Gray Sister, a nun who cleanses the bodies of the deceased so that their souls can pass on; otherwise, they will rise as spirits with a ravenous hunger for the living. She would rather deal with the dead than the living, who trade whispers about her scarred hands and troubled past.

When her convent is attacked by possessed soldiers, Artemisia defends it by awakening an ancient spirit bound to a saint’s relic. It is a revenant, a malevolent being that threatens to possess her the moment she drops her guard. Wielding its extraordinary power almost consumes her—but death has come to Loraille, and only a vespertine, a priestess trained to wield a high relic, has any chance of stopping it. With all knowledge of vespertines lost to time, Artemisia turns to the last remaining expert for help: the revenant itself.

As she unravels a sinister mystery of saints, secrets, and dark magic, her bond with the revenant grows. And when a hidden evil begins to surface, she discovers that facing this enemy might require her to betray everything she has been taught to believe—if the revenant doesn’t betray her first.

Book Purchase links:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Book Depository
Indiebound

Margaret Rogerson is the author of the New York Times bestsellers An Enchantment of Ravens and Sorcery of Thorns. She has a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology from Miami University. When not reading or writing she enjoys sketching, gaming, making pudding, and watching more documentaries than is socially acceptable (according to some). She lives near Cincinnati, Ohio, beside a garden full of hummingbirds and roses. Visit her at MargaretRogerson.com.

Author Links:
http://www.margaretrogerson.com/
https://twitter.com/MarRogerson
https://www.instagram.com/margaret_rogerson/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15455603.Margaret_Rogerson

Giveaway

Up for grabs on the book blog tour is two (2) copies of VESPERTINE by Margaret Rogerson, one a physical finished copy and one a digital copy. Open USA only.

Giveaway starts: Monday, September 27, 2021

Giveaway ends: Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 12:00 a.m. CDT

Enter on Rafflecopter!

Book Review

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

I absolutely adored this book. It had a bit of a slow beginning for me, but I devoured the last half. Vespertine has most of my favorite elements in a story:

• a fierce, believable, complicated heroine forced to battle both her inner and outer demons
• fantastic chemistry and friendships between characters
• deep, nuanced world building
• solid writing
• enemies to friends tropes

Artemisia is not your average MC. She is stoic, anxious, and tries to avoid people at all cost. There is quite a bit of emotional distance between her and everything that’s happening in the book because of her personality. As such, this book reads in a more detached manner than what I would normally choose. That being said, once I learned more of Artemisia’s backstory and why she is the way she is, I was emotionally hooked and ended up loving it.

Rogerson’s a wonderful writer. For a pretty dark, violent book, there were plenty of places where I laughed out loud while reading it. The conversations and dialogue between Artemisia and the revenant were some of my favorite parts of the book. Highlights include:

• “Stupid? If there’s one thing I can always rely upon, it’s the reassuring dependability of human idiocy. Give your kind a century or so, and they’ll happily repeat the exact same mistakes that nearly wiped them all out a few generations before.” (p. 66 in the hardcover).
• “Oh, pardon me, you’re a nun. Silly of me to suggest that you’ve ever imagined a single delightful experience in the entire span of your dull, miserable, hateful nun existence.” (p. 125)

The ending has unexpected twists and turns that I really did not see coming. I am very excited for the sequel, and can’t wait to see where Rogerson takes us next. Thank you so much to Simon Teen for providing me with a finished copy of this book.

Cover art by the incredible Charlie Bowater