Today I’m excited to be talking about Reap & Sow by Charlotte B. Plumb. Thank you so much to Dusk for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This review originally appeared on The Nerd Daily.
The penniless in Blackbridge only have two choices: sell your body, or sell your soul. And thanks to Eda Shaw, business is booming.
Indentured to a capricious demon, Mr Night, Eda and her brothers arrange illicit Pacts on his behalf, luring the city’s most desperate into trading years of their lives for their deepest desires.
When a Pact goes awry, her brothers are arrested and Eda quickly realises she’ll need an infernal ally of her own: Kit’rath, a demon with a curious penchant for humanity, and the only being in Blackbridge Mr Night seems to fear.
But Kit’s help doesn’t come cheap. Eda’s already given him her soul; she can’t afford to give him her heart.
CW: death, murder, violence, execution, torture, religious fanaticism
My Thoughts:
Reap & Sow was such a sumptuous debut. The writing was intoxicating and really brought the world of Blackbridge to life around you.
Eda and Kit burst off the page and straight into your heart. The characterisation is such a strength of this book, feeling three-dimensional and well-crafted. You can very much see the journeys each of them embarks on in this book and time is given for particular character beats to play out and breathe a little. Both of them are complicated characters, forced to become what they are by a cruel and unrelenting world. The dynamic between the two of them is immediately electrifying and it grows and shifts in exciting ways. Plumb keeps you on your toes but there is plenty of excellent dialogue and flirty moments between the two. It is an actual enemies to lovers to something else arc with stakes, tension and hatred seeping through their skin.
I loved how Gothic this book was with a wonderful command of darkness in the story. You are grappling with the corrosive nature of power, all-consuming ambition and the prices people might be willing to pay to hold onto their power. There is a ripple effect and plenty of the monstrosity on display is that of humanity with those they deem lesser in some way. It is a book with plenty of bloodshed and truly terrifying moments that stick with you long after the final page. Plumb balances that darkness perfectly, ensuring you understand this world and the stakes but also keeping it within a crossover space.
At the heart of it all are the Pacts that Eda and her brothers have as their only way of survival. These are a fascinating concept and an interesting take on the classic devil’s bargain, trading away years of your life for a boon. However there is precision needed or you will be deeply disappointed with the details. This is a world that despises weakness and will stop at nothing to get what it wants. It is brutal and we explore the consequences of some of these Pacts throughout the story. They speak to the wider world-building Plumb is deftly crafting, which was one of the highlights for me. There is a bigger magic system and indeed political power plays in store that have ripple effects that will carry over. I really enjoyed drilling down into this, while also leaving plenty of intrigue for future stories. There is a particular character bound up in this that I cannot wait for readers to fall in love with and I demand to know more of their story, if Plumb ever decides to share. It is a richly imagined world and I adore the level of detail and lore we get here. This feels like a world that has truly been inhabited.
It is a tense read with palpable stakes at all times and even in the moments of levity, you are keenly aware of the ticking clock. Plumb creates a paranoid atmosphere dominated by this religious fanaticism that Eda has been crushed under for her whole life. She has had to pay the price for the decisions of those who came before her and now her brothers are in deadly peril too. There is this sense of history repeating itself that feels chilling. Everything builds to a fantastic and heart-wrenching finale but do not allow yourself to relax until after the final page. Without giving anything away, it is a brutal ending and the final lines of the story have rung in my head ever since. I was delighted to hear that there is a sequel coming but I also fear what Plumb might have up her sleeve.
Reap & Sow was such a gorgeous romantasy with a real sense of darkness and heart.
