Book Review: Vengeful

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

While Vicious was one of my top reads of the year so far, Vengeful fell a little flat for me. Don’t get me wrong I still loved it, but I felt myself getting bored at times, and kept putting it down. I was teetering on a 3/4 star rating but after some thought I went with 4 stars. 

If you are not familiar with Vengeful, it is the second book of the Villains series by V.E. Schwab. It follows Victor and Eli – former college besties now sworn enemies who happen to be EO’s – or ExtraOrdinaries. The book is told through the same non-linear timeline as Vicious, and begins pretty much right after Vicious ends. Vengeful follows Victor, Eli, Sydney, and Mitch as they continue on their perspective journeys after events at the end of Vicious. Schwab introduces us to new characters, Marcella and June. There are more, but these two got the most attention.  At times Vengeful felt more like Marcella’s story than Victor or Eli’s story. Of course you find out what Stell has been up to and how he plays into the grand scheme of things. 

In terms of plot, it started off quite strong. Marcella is introduced at the very beginning and you immediately think, oh, yes, I’m gonna like her. Victor is dealing with the physical affects from the ending of Vicious and learning how to adapt. Eli of course is well, not really a threat or so you think.  The middle of the book is where I kind of lost interest. There are A LOT of characters in Vengeful, and by the middle of the book they are all doing their own thing which is fine, but it didn’t feel as if the book was moving forward. It felt a bit stagnant and repetitive. I ended up putting Vengeful down quite a bit to read other books because I kept losing interest in the middle. 

Vengeful picks back up towards the ending and I was able to breeze through it. The ending for me wasn’t as strong as the ending in Vicious. The ending in Vicious felt complete, but the ending in Vengeful left me with a lot of questions still unanswered. I wonder if that was purposely done because there will eventually be a third Villains book, which would make sense. 

I would still recommend Vengeful to people who have yet to read it. I still really enjoyed it, and I think Schwab’s writing is some of the best out there, I just think it needed a bit longer to cook so to speak. 

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