A tremendous thank you for the eARC!!!!

God, this series is fantastic!
Herald of the Witch's Mark ups the intrigue, mystery, and suspense keeping me on the edge of my seat every chapter. I'm in love with these characters and was extremely invested to see how they would get around the problems they were confronted with. I also was inordinately happy just reading moments where Saffron got to be particularly clever or Cylvan was being soft and gentle. In stories where romance features heavily, I'm always nervous that the relationship will have a power imbalance, or feel contrived, or any number of things. But I genuinely love Cylvan and Saffron's relationship. I love watching them interact and their relationship is strong enough where it feels like a really solid backbone for the series. The new characters introduced are also wonderful and I can't wait to see where Graves takes Sionnach and Copper especially in the next installment.

Coming back to my extreme investment, I was so into this book, nearly every time there was a reveal I was audibly gasping. In the last five chapters I had to put the book down several times and go walk around a bit because I was so stressed and absorbed in the story.

Kellen Graves' writing really brings the story to life. Everything is so vivid it leaps off the page for me to the point it almost feels like they switched on a movie projector in my mind and I forgot all i was looking at were black and white pages.

I know this was just gushing and the eARC copy might make this seem a bit disingenuous, but I bought the first two books of the series and adored them and I think this one might be the best one yet. I think the author has improved on a technical level as well as the excitement in this installment for me was off the charts. I gush because I adored it. And I would have gushed just as much if I had bought the physical on release day with my own money (which I will, in fact, still do).