Ok I’ll start off by saying I ate this book up. The writing is kinda bad and the author’s choices took me out of it from time to time, but I found myself really wanting to know what happened, which I think is what’s important. I’ve read tons of well-written books that I did not care about. 

It’s choppy and jarring sometimes, the way the characters interact with each other is really inconsistent. Also the constant mentioning of how tiny the FMC is got super annoying, but that’s a personal problem. 

I didn’t go into this knowing it was YA, so I was wanting more from the romance that I was never going to get. Now that I know it’s YA it’s fine but I was definitely frustrated at the end. That said, I loved the characters and would prolly read more if there was more.

💬: N/A

📖Genres: historical fiction, vampires, romance, historical

📚Page Count: 368

🎧Audiobook Length: 11:06 

👩🏾‍🏫My Rating: ⭐️⭐️ - 2/5

The Dangerous Ones takes place during the civil war, where vampires are working with the confederates to continue enslaving Black folks. Jerusalem is a Saint and Satins have demi god strength and power and they use it to fight vampires. She is a former slave who fought against her slave master and killed him resulting in what she believes to be her whole family being slaughtered. Jerusalem gets word that her brother might be alive so now she's searching for the vampires from her past because they might have him. Alexi is a 300 year only vampire working with Jerusalem, a group of Saints, and the union to fight against the confederates. This definitely reminded me of Ring Shout but I don't think "The Dangerous Ones" reaches it's full potential. 

There were a few problems with this story; including confusing time jumps and flashbacks, to misplaced romantic banter, little to no world building and character development, and one dimensional characters. The time jumps were continuously confusing, I don't think they were very helpful in terms of story telling, they actually seemed to detract from the main story. I know that love is supposed to be part of the plot but it really felt like it didn't fit right in the story. It felt like I was reading two different stories, one where the main characters were in an enemy to lovers romance and one where there's action and the civil war with death and vampires. The two genres didn't really mesh well.

Overall, the audiobook narration was okay but, the pacing felt off, the flashbacks were more confusing than anything, the characters were one dimensional, there was little to no character building, the romance didn't really work in this story,  little to no world building, and the author used current and modern language instead of historical language from the times (seeing as this is a historical novel). I'm giving this 2 stars out of 5.
⭐️⭐️ - 2/5 Stars

Thank you [NetGalley.com], Lauren Blackwood (the author), and Macmillan Audio (the publisher) for the arc audiobook (advanced reader's copy.)