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Cruel Illusions
Cruel Illusions
Cruel Illusions
Ebook557 pages8 hours

Cruel Illusions

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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“The perfect sinisterly magical escape…full of longing, desperation, and betrayal.” —Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of the Caraval trilogy and Once Upon a Broken Heart

Caraval meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this “beguiling” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) young adult fantasy about a girl who makes a deal with a magical secret society to enter a potentially deadly competition for the chance to avenge her mother’s death.

Ever since a vampire murdered her mother, Ava has been determined to get revenge. This all-encompassing drive has given her the fuel she needed to survive foster home after foster home.

But it’s been ten years since anyone’s seen a vampire, and Ava has lost hope that she’ll ever find one…until she stumbles across a hidden magic show where she witnesses impossible illusions. The magicians may not be the bloodsuckers she’s hunting, but Ava is convinced something supernatural is at play, so she sneaks backstage and catches them in acts they can’t explain.

But they’ve been waiting for her.

The magicians reveal they’re part of an ancient secret society with true magic, and Ava has the same power in her blood that they do. If she joins them, they promise to teach her the skills she needs to hunt vampires and avenge her mother. But there’s a catch: if she wants to keep the power they offer, she needs to prove she’s worthy of it. And to do so, she must put on the performance of her life in a sinister and dangerous competition where illusion and reality blur, and the stakes are deadly.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 1, 2022
ISBN9781665902120
Author

Margie Fuston

Margie Fuston grew up in the woods of California where she made up fantasy worlds that always involved unicorns. In college, she earned undergraduate degrees in business and literature and a master’s in creative writing. Now she’s back in the woods and spends all her time wrangling a herd of cats and helping her nephews hunt ghosts, pond monsters, and mermaids.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cruel Illusions by Margie Fuston is a novel that I have not seen get a lot of press, and that surprises me because there is a lot to like here. Yes, I know I am biased toward liking anything involving vampires, but they are superficial to the story. At its core, it is a story about magic and power dynamics with a bit of revenge thrown into the mix. What Ava learns about the secret society she is so desperate to join had me sitting up and buckling in because I knew I was in for a ride. I was not expecting at least some of the twists. Anticipating the others did not bother me or detract from my enjoyment of the story. I finished Cruel Illusions with that sense of satisfaction a good story brings and also wanting more from Ms. Fuston.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    TW/CW: Blood, death, body horror, violence, fantasy violence, murder, talk of losing parentsRATING: 3.5/5REVIEW: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.Cruel Illusions is the story of Ava, a young woman in the foster system because she has lost both of her parents to violence – her father to a mugging and her mother to a vampire. One night when she escapes out the window of a foster home, she discovers a magic show featuring real magicians, and they offer to take her in and train her to become their apprentice, as well as to teach her how to kill vampires so she can avenge her mother’s death.This book has a lot going on in it and my feelings about this book are very complicated. It’s very well written, with good world building and an interesting story, but I think it tries to do way too much. In my opinion, this book would have made a much better duology or trilogy than trying to cram so much into one book. For the last quarter of the book I was like “and now it’s over!” just to find that there was something else that had to be done or settled. What would have been exciting in more than one book became tedious and overdone when it was all crammed together. It’s not that I didn’t like this book – it was original and unlike any fantasy I’d ever red. The characters were interesting and well developed. I liked the writing. I just wish that instead of a single volume this could have been two or three so that the reader isn’t so overwhelmed by everything that happens.

Book preview

Cruel Illusions - Margie Fuston

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