All of Us Villains
by Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman
Publication Date: November 9th 2021
Publisher: Tor Teen
Find This Book: All of Us Villains
Rating: 5/5
All of Us Villains is a new fantasy duology that you’d have to pay me to shut up about. It was action-packed yet still had a well developed world and well developed characters. Every 20 years, seven families send a family champion to compete in a magical fight to the death. The winner’s family get sole access to the town stores of high magic until the next tournament. This tournament is a magical curse upon the town, and any families that fail to send a champion get a member of their family killed by the curse at random. Foody and Herman took the ‘games’ trope and made it totally unique. I love the concept that a curse is what forces and maintains the games and their violence. It makes for an exceptionally eerie and tragic backdrop to the plot and to the character’s motivations.
Other perks?
-Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman co-wrote. I’d be curious to know the breakdown of who wrote what because the entire book felt so cohesive. This writing duo was meant to be!
-Multiple POV’s that are all well-developed! I feel like most books always have thaaat character that you’re struggling to get through when it’s their turn to POV but that was not the case with All of Us Villains. I was excited for every single POV change and to listen to all their unique perspectives.
-Book within a book. I love when books have some internal literature and lore! In this case, an in-universe book was written about the cursed tournament and a quote from the book started each chapter.
-Only one bed trope. Without getting into detail I loved forced-proximity tropes and it was so good in this book!