Bid My Soul Farewell
by Beth Revis
Middle School, High School    Razorbill/Penguin    316 pp.    g
9/19    978-1-5951-4719-6    $18.99

Newly minted necromancer Nedra (Give the Dark My Love, rev. 9/18) has only one goal — to fully restore life to her twin sister, whom she had previously attempted to raise from the dead. Meanwhile, love interest Grey allies himself with the Emperor in hopes of attaining a pardon for Nedra, who is under penalty of death for necromancy. Their encounters are romantic (even steamy), but Grey’s love for Nedra can’t overcome his distaste for her magic. The Emperor’s deviousness is greater than it seems: will Grey and Nedra resolve their differences before they each become a pawn in the Emperor’s game? The horror that fueled the first book gets dialed back a notch here, making for somewhat more comfortable reading (though still delivering substantial dismemberments and executions), while the romance and the characters’ individual struggles come to the foreground. At the end, Revis delivers a clever expansion of the premise, which ties together multiple plot threads to close the duology in unexpected and highly gratifying ways.

From the January/February 2020 Horn Book Magazine.