Grim Lovelies could be so much more

Megan Shepherd’s Grim Lovelies suffers from a lack of contextualization and world-building, which is a shame considering how interesting the premise is.

With Grim Lovelies, Megan Shepherd is kicking off a new series (indeed, there’s an ad for the sequel at the end of the book). But for a first book in what’s presumably meant to be an all-new world, it feels like Anouk’s first adventure isn’t constructed in a way that makes it pleasant for the reader to figure things out.

Now, granted, part of the whole story is that Anouk has only been human for about a year, and that she, as one of Mada Vittora’s beasties, has never left the townhouse in Paris. This is all fair enough. But most everyone else knows more about the world than she does, and yet there’s not much in the way of explaining; Shepherd instead throws around terms like Pretties (in-universe slang for humans) and the vitae echo (part of the price of casting magic) that may leave a reader confused.

Beyond that, Anouk is a pretty standard urban/modern fantasy heroine, and as a result, she can be a little boring. Her strength is apparently that she’s been listening to the witch cast spells and can thus repeat them and that she’s got a sense of hope. Granted, not every spell works, and it’s not to say that she ends the book successfully. But since we’re riding along with her the entire time, it’s hard to find her particularly complex or engaging, at least for this reader.

What Shepherd does reveal about the wider world is indeed intriguing. There are four (and only four) classes of magical beings, which seems somewhat limiting, particularly when the Royal and Witch types seem to overlap strongly anyway. Beasties and Goblins, meanwhile, are the underclasses, and Shepherd takes some time to examine that instead of presenting it simply as the way of the world.

But it all just feels a bit … rushed somehow, as if there are some things missing toward the beginning. Additionally, Shepherd has her characters overuse a few vulgar French phrases — ones that, if they were printed in English, would not be present in a YA book, so that’s doubly troublesome.

All the same, for those who need something a little darker for this spooky season, Grim Lovelies might be a decent fit.