Famine

• Author: Laura Thalassa
• Genre: Romance/Erotica
• Publication Date: August 15, 2023
• Publisher: Bloom Books
• Series: The Four Horsemen #3

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloom Books for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

CONTENT WARNING: blood, murder, gore, violence, mention of death of a parent, torture, mention of rape, abuse

They came to Earth. 

Pestilence, War, Famine, Death—four horsemen riding their screaming steeds, racing to the corners of the world. Four horsemen with the power to destroy all of humanity. They came to earth, and they came to end us all.

Ana da Silva always assumed she’d die young, but she never expected it to be at the hands of the haunting immortal who spared her life years ago. Famine. But if the horseman remembers her, he must not care, for when she comes face-to-face with him for the second time in her life, she’s stabbed and left for dead.

Only, she doesn’t quite die.

If there’s one thing Famine is good at, it’s cruelty. He can’t forget the pain humanity has brought him, and he’s ready to bring it back to them tenfold. But when Ana, a ghost from his past, corners him for what he did to her, she and her empty threats captivate him, and he decides to keep her around.

In spite of themselves, Ana and Famine are drawn to each other. But at the end of the day, the two are enemies. Nothing changes that. Not one kind act, not two. And definitely not a few steamy nights. But enemies or reluctant lovers, if they don’t stop themselves soon, heaven will.

After reading the first two books in the series, I realized that I was becoming hooked and wanted to see how Thalassa was going to keep things interesting for the second half of the series. The first two books followed a similar pattern, and I was very curious about this book.

This book takes place in Brazil, so it was interesting to see how different parts of the world are affected by the arrival of the horsemen. With the initial arrival of the horsemen, the world lost access to internet, electronics, automobiles, and don’t have reliable use of firearms. So everything about how they live has had to change, and so far, it’s been really different depending on the part of the world. This continues to be a trend in this book, further expanding the world-building. Ana and Famine’s story is set in rural Brazil, where a lot of the land is farms.

Make no mistake, Ana is a heroine like you are not expecting. She’s brash, lewd, crude, and has a filthy mouth, yet is somehow absolutely lovable. I was rooting for her within a single chapter, and a lot of it was because of her personality, but some of it was also learning what made her the way she is. Don’t worry, this isn’t a spoiler, but Ana is a sex worker, and life circumstances pushed her into that profession. 

The sassy and fearless exterior that Ana shows the world hides a kind and gentle heart. However, she also has a fiery temper that she doesn’t hesitate to show without thinking of the consequences at times. Thalassa does a fantastic job of showing and not just telling us that Ana has lived a life that puts her in danger regularly, since Ana reacts in a smart and prepared way in the dangerous situations that come up—instead of just waiting to be saved, she thinks ahead and finds ways to save herself. 

Ana and Famine’s characters are well-matched, and it’s easy to see how the enemies to lovers dynamic develops between these two. It builds throughout the book, as the characters move from lust to love, until the tension is nearly unbearable. It felt like it took Ana a while longer to win Famine over than it took Pestilence and War to be won over, but that’s explained in the story.

One of the things that I didn’t like about this book wasn’t specifically this book, but maybe due to the fact that I’ve binge read three of these books and they are starting to feel repetitive. The horseman comes, the girl catches his eye for whatever reason, they ride around, bicker, ride around, bicker, rinse, repeat, fall in love, then more stuff happens which I can’t detail because spoilers but it’s relatively similar in all of the books.

Overall, I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more if I had read this with a bit more time spaced out between this one and the last. But it isn’t bad—I enjoyed the characters, the way the romance developed, the setting, and the writing, yet I found myself not getting excited about reading it, and I honestly think it’s just because I was a bit burnt out on the plot. The one other thing that I didn’t love about this book was the cliffhanger ending, especially since I was already planning to take a little break between reading this one and the last book in the series, but I also really want to find out what happens next!

People who have sat around with me while I’m reading, especially when there’s a surprising reveal, a shocking plot twist, or an unexpected event often look up in alarm when I gasp audibly. The gasp factor is directly related to the number of times I audibly gasp during a reading, and there isn’t an upper limit.

Gasp Factor: 8