Review: Pestilence by Laura Thalassa

Publication Date: March 20th 2018
Publisher: Laura Thalassa
Pages: 383

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. 
When Pestilence comes for Sara Burn’s town, one thing is certain: everyone she knows and loves is marked for death. Unless, of course, the angelic-looking horseman is stopped, which is exactly what Sara has in mind when she shoots the unholy beast off his steed. 
Too bad no one told her Pestilence can’t be killed. 
Now the horseman, very much alive and very pissed off, has taken her prisoner, and he’s eager to make her suffer. Only, the longer she’s with him, the more uncertain she is about his true feelings towards her … and hers towards him. 
And now, well, Sara might still be able to save the world, but in order to do so, she'll have to sacrifice her heart in the process.

This book kept on appearing, the name "Pestilence" seemed to be everywhere until eventually I caved and found it on amazon. It then sat on my wishlist for a while as I ummed and ahhed - on the one hand the blurb looked kinda brilliant and the reviews for it were through the roof, on the other, I was nervous of it letting me down after all the hype.

Never fear, this book totally lives up to the hype. It's sassy, it's dark, it's gut wrenching and saucy and utterly brilliant, and once I'd started reading I found it very difficult to stop.

Sara is a compelling heroine. Admittedly she makes some questionable choices at a few points, and seems incredibly distracted by Pestilence's body, but on the whole I really felt for her. She's snarky and relatable and I frequently found myself sniggering at the sass. She's stuck in this incredibly difficult position, and I felt for her. Her shifting emotions and feelings as time went on made sense, instead of just feeling like insta-love and weird and squicky. So bravo on that front.

I also really enjoyed the interactions with other people that the two go through - the different responses, feelings and emotions, and how Sara and Pestilence each deal with those. The anger! The heartbreak! My poor little heart!


I did find the grammatical and spelling errors to be a little frustrating, I feel that things like that really should be picked up before a book is published, and it diminishes my enjoyment of a story because I'm picky and grumpy like that.

However overall I found this to be a really enjoyable story. Ok, maybe enjoyable is the wrong word when you're talking about plague... But still! It was engrossing, I stormed through it in a couple of days, and now I'm here desperately waiting for book 2 "War" to come out next spring.