Title: The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)

Author: Kylie Lee Baker

Publisher: Inkyard Press 2021

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 393

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf: BOTM Cleanout

Death is her destiny.

Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries. Expected to obey the harsh hierarchy of the Reapers who despise her, Ren conceals her emotions and avoids her tormentors as best she can.

When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she’s never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death…only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy. Determined to earn respect, Ren accepts an impossible task—find and eliminate three dangerous Yokai demons—and learns how far she’ll go to claim her place at Death’s side.

The premise and start of this book really sucked me in. I wanted a horror-ish telling of Japanese mythology. For the first couple of chapters, I was completely in it. But then, once Red and her brother actually arrive in Japan, the story basically stops. We get huge passages of slow-moving prose with lots of annoying whining. And the romance! Completely ridiculous and so not a romance. I hated it. I tried to look past those issues, but ultimately I just couldn’t find myself enjoying this book.

The Keeper of Night

• #1 The Keeper of Night

• #2 The Empress of Time

Next up on the TBR pile: