Vengeful

"The world isn’t empty. It’s just full of the wrong people."

V.E. Schwab has a way of making you want to root for the absolute worst human beings on the planet, and Vengeful continues that tradition with razor-sharp prose and a cold, calculated atmosphere. But coming off the tight, claustrophobic brilliance of Vicious, this sequel felt like a different beast entirely. One that’s perhaps a bit too hungry for its own good.

Let’s talk about the scale. Where Vicious felt grounded in a gritty, "this could actually happen in a lab" kind of way, Vengeful blows the doors off the hinges. While the pacing itself is technically sound, the book felt incredibly long-winded. We move from a focused revenge plot between two rivals to a sprawling urban fantasy epic.

The time-jumping, which was the heartbeat of the first book, felt a lot more taxing here. It’s a lot of mental gymnastics to keep track of where and when everyone is, especially when the cast has doubled.

My biggest hurdle was the rarity of ExtraOrdinaries. In book one, becoming an EO felt like a lightning-strike event (mythic, terrifying, and singular). In Vengeful, it feels like you can’t throw a rock without hitting someone with a superpower. This shift dampened the "realism" that made the first book so haunting. When everyone is "special," the stakes for Eli and Victor started to feel diluted by the noise of a dozen other power players.

Marcella Riggins: She is, without a doubt, the star of this show. She’s a "burn the world down" kind of woman, and watching her navigate the patriarchy of the mob with literal lightning in her veins was satisfying. However, her presence often pushed our original duo to the sidelines.

Victor & Eli: I wanted more of them. Their dynamic is the soul of this series, and because the book felt so open-ended, their "closure" (if you can even call it that) left me feeling a bit hollow.

The Found Family: Sydney, Mitch, and Dominic remain the highlights. Their quiet moments of domesticity amidst the chaos provided the much-needed emotional tether this book otherwise lacked.

I went into this thinking it was the conclusion of a duology, and perhaps that’s why the ending stung. It feels unfinished. It’s a bridge rather than a destination.

If you loved the first one for its tight, clinical focus on two broken men, this might feel a bit messy. But if you’re here for the expansion of a world where morality is a suggestion and power is a curse, it’s still a masterclass in anti-hero storytelling. It just could have used a slightly sharper pair of editing shears.

The "middle-book syndrome" hits hard here. Marcella is a fantastic addition, the sheer volume of new EOs makes the world feel less "precious" and more like a standard superhero trope.