2022 reading-wise was off to a great start, Ace of Spades was incredible by the way and you should go read that book, but The Devil Makes Three was a bit disappointing and didn’t reach my high expectations after reading Ace of Spades. I heard a lot of intriguing things about this book from said older sister to be a YA Dark Academia Horror/Thriller novel, spooky and chilling which obviously sounded like a book I would really enjoy because I’m weird that way, but guess I didn’t end up liking it as much as I though. I need to shut up now and actually start writing this review so here’s my honest and critical review of The Devil Makes Three.

The book stars with introducing the protaganist: Tess Matheson, who’s working as an assistant at her elite private high school. Her character was more expected as a character who is not as privilaged as the other students, a cello prodigy who got into the school, and as expected of any older sibling-fiercely protective of her younger sister. She meets Eliot Birch, a seemingly rich bastard who has more than meets the eye. His mother’s dying from Cancer, his father is a grade A a-hole, and he secretly has an passion in grimoires and magic books, hoping that studying them will fix his life above. The two meet in the weirdest way possible and what they unleash is a lot bigger than either of them signed up for.

Honestly, I think the reason why this book was bumped down to a 2 stars was because instead of a chill that was supposed to come of excitment and thrill, I got chills from how creepy this book was. Which normally would be a fantastic thing but this book took that up to a whole new level. Like theres chilling creepy and then there’s the kind of creepy that makes you just freeze and look around your room to make sure there’s no demons in your room to haunt you. The plot of the story was also a bit slow and I felt like Tess and Eliot’s love life was so rushed throughout the book as well. I mean they go down into a no no basement thingy and decided to open a book that clearly looks like it’s posessed and suddenly he’s in love with her. Did we skip the chemistry between the two or something? My train of thought when he made a move was just ‘Y’all just nearly died and now you’re asking her out to dinner???’ If all it took was a near-death or truamatic experience to make someone fall in love with me, I would’ve had a line of guys asking for my number or to take me out to dinner. Sadly, my butt is still single so clearly that does not work. Obviously.

Speaking of chilling, I mentioned that instead of like getting good chills from this book I got what-the-heck-did-I-just-read-is-my-room-now-haunted kind of chills. To be fair, I have to give props to the author for writing it so well that it made my blood run cold but I am like the biggest baby in the world according to my older sister and I was reading this book at night like the idiot I am so yeah, not the biggest fan. Reading this book did remind me why I sometimes enjoy horror movies even though I cannot for the life of me do jump scares but I’m fine with blood and gore by itself for some reason. This book just reminded me a lot a horror movie that was a book instead because Tess and Elliot made a lot of uh, questionable decisions. The main reason why I love watching horror movies is to mainly make fun of the characters in the film for making dumb choices to move everything along. While it’s all staged, it’s still extremley stupid and entertaining to watch, and Tess and Elliot’s choices to go down into the forbidden basement in search for a grimoires or touch that clearly possesed book was just that. Except less entertaining and more exsaperating.

The Devil Makes Three was more of a book that I didn’t really enjoy most of it and clearly had more thoughts than I expected, just look at this moutain of a review, I did not expect this review to turn out as long as it did. Then again, with books you don’t tend to enjoy as much, writing a review becomes a whole rant and I am fantastic at those so to speak. Ahem. Moving on. Recommendation wise, I wouldn’t really recommend it but I think a lot more of you would enjoy it but this book was just not for me, I hope that if you do pick it up, you’ll enjoy it more than I did.

FINAL RATING: