The Serpent and the Wings of Night

I wanted to at minimum, enjoy this book (in a junk food sort of manner). I've been craving a good vampire novel for a while, but this is not it.

1. The writing itself wasn't bad fundamentally, but suffered from a lot of tell instead of show. We're told over and over again how powerful Vincent was, yet we don't see it ever (quite literally - all his actions happen off screen and are only briefly mentioned).

2. I'm terribly tired of the sassy, bitchy heroines that plague this genre nowadays. Nothing wrong with a headstrong heroine, but I feel like there's a severe lack of empathy for others that have been a common theme amongst all these heroines and Oraya is not an exception. Her driving motivation for going back to her hometown doesn't even make sense. It's demonstrated quite well that her whole town was razed. In what world does it even make sense for someone related to her to still be alive?

3. Plot-driven book with so many plot holes I don't even know where to begin. Lack of explanation of magic, lack of explanation for the whole trial (frenzied killing only happened the first night - then?). Oraya is a human living in a vampire-centric world, yet she always gets away because she's more powerful. When she's not, her father conveniently intervenes to save her. No sense of real danger or urgency whatsoever.

4. Can we please stop using the “fuck” an exorbitant amount of times when the setting is clearly not modern? Reading curse words every few sentence makes the whole story feel childish.

5. The least convincing romance I've ever read. Raihn and Oraya literally just exist in the same place, and there is little development between them between hating to suddenly loving each other.