What is the book about?

I’ll put the official synopsis up here and then my thoughts will be after.

Synopsis:

A vengeful girl. A hollow boy. A missing god.

Rui has one goal in mind—honing her magic to avenge her mother’s death. 

Yiran is the black sheep of an illustrious family. The world would be at his feet—had he been born with magic. 

Nikai is a Reaper, serving the Fourth King of Hell. When his master disappears, the underworld begins to crumble…and the human world will be next if the King is not found.

When an accident causes Rui’s power to transfer to Yiran, everything turns upside down. Without her magic, Rui has no tool for vengeance. With it, Yiran finally feels like he belongs. That is, until Rui discovers she might hold the key to the missing death god and strikes a dangerous bargain with another King.

As darkness takes over, three paths intersect in the shadows. And three lives bound by fate must rise against destiny before the barrier between worlds falls and all Hell breaks loose—literally.

My Thoughts:

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my very first book review! I hope you enjoy your time here and maybe even find a new book to read/obsess over! I genuinely have so so much love for this book and I am very glad that I get to share my thoughts!🦋

For starters this book has some of my favourite things in a YA contemporary fantasy:

• Magical Monsters
• Mystery’s
• Magic
• Romantic tension!
• And one of the best friendships dynamics i’ve seen in a while

The plot development was on point even if at some points you have next to no idea where it will take you! LOL
We keep getting fed information at a steady pace and the three POV allows us to experience to story from multiple angles and learn more about the world and story through their eyes. Very sad we don’t get to here from Zizi that much, but hoping to hear more from him in book two.
It gives you just enough information to keep you interested but not enough so that you will figure out the big stuff. I was constantly having to remind myself to actually PUT THE BOOK DOWN AND GO TO SLEEP!

The Characters were so engaging and well written and so very endearing I will love them always. The character arcs were very interesting to follow and you really just want to root for everyone (Except Ten, you know what you did!!😡). I really loved the way we got to experience how different characters think through different situations.

Now on to the representation!!

I got my copy of this book from FairyLoot (which is pretty much the best part of my month at this point). A few weeks before the book arrived I put in a request to include more Queer characters and representation in the books and i think my prayers must have been answered!!

• Rui, Yiran and Zizi are all Bi (confirmed by the author)🩷💜💙
• Ada is most likely a Lesbian 🧡🤍🩷
• And One and Teshin are bouth Non-Binary!💛🤍💜🖤
  

Even more so, we actually get two different relationships throughout the book!
one of them is MF (Male-Female) and the other is MM (Male-Male). And we get some really adorable romantic interactions which I personally think are just the Cutest 🥰

The Ratting:

10/10 this book was absolutely amazing I loved it so much!

for info on the scoring click here

Sign off

Thank you so so much for taking the time to read my review of June CL Tan’s Darker By Four! It really is such a amazing book and it 100% deserves to be read and shared
hope to see you again soon!
-Sam


P.S.
The amount of little nerdy tidbits in this book is quite impressive! Once you finish, definitely head over to her website and take a look
and here is the specific Easter Eggs page
Enjoy!

Spoilers!!!

Please DO NOT click the toggle unless you are okay with major spoilers or have read and finished the book!

Now for the rant

because I need one lol 😂

warning may continue swearing 🤬