Book Review | The Fox and the Devil

In The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White, Van Helsing's daughter, Anneke, hunts down her father's murderer across Europe.

Theoretically, a sapphic cat and mouse game sounds great! However, this one really dropped the ball for me. It turned out astonishingly dull for a murder mystery. I felt like there was a lack of tension, and I wish there was a stronger sense of danger toward the Anneke’s group. I would’ve also liked to have seen more of a push and pull between the two leads.

Also, this might partly boil down to personal preference, but the writing style drove me up the wall. It’s told mostly in the first person present tense, which is a tense that is better suited for a contemporary thriller than a historical fantasy that’s supposed to be set during the Victorian period.

Moreover, the author has a habit of favoring short, choppy sentences. You can take a look at this line of dialogue here:

“No he didn’t. It was her. This woman. This Diavola. She killed him, and I found her. I lost her again."

All the sentences here are generally of equally length. It comes across and stilted and disjointed, and the lack of variance doesn’t allow for any sense of artistic emphasis.

Overall, I was disappointed in the actual writing quality of this book. Between this and my poor experience with Lucy Undying, I’m not sure if I’ll pick up this author again.

Thank you, NetGalley and Del Rey, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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