The Marionettes

By:

Katie Wismer

Spice Scale

Number of books

4 Published

KU

✅

Audiobook

✅

Series Status

Complete

Interconnected

N/A

Overall Rating

Coming Soon

“The Marionettes” follows Valerie Darkmore, a blood witch whose entire life has led to her initiation into an elite order of witches sworn to serve powerful vampires, a role her dwindling bloodline is expected to continue. As she enters the academy trials that should have guaranteed her a place, sabotage, deadly secrets, and shifting loyalties turn what should be a formality into a fight for survival. Surrounded by hidden agendas and a world where alliances with vampires are as dangerous as they are necessary, Valerie must decide who to trust while discovering that nothing about her magic, her legacy, or the society she serves is as simple as she believed.

Jamie’s review

The Marionettes series started out strong. I couldn’t figure out why no one was talking about it! All the way through book 3, I was on the edge of my seat. Then book 4 fizzled out and I was let down and I understood why the series isn’t very popular.

I actually really liked Valerie, our FMC, and the concept of the marionettes being bodyguards to the vampires 🧛. The love triangle (square?) situation with Connor, Reid, and Cam was really good… until it wasn’t. The author really did us dirty and all that foreshadowing for absolutely nothing was just confusing. JUSTICE FOR CAM!

Very fast paced and action packed, which I liked! But the relationships felt shallow and I normally love me a shadow daddy but these shadow daddies were not it. Not my favorite series. Womp womp.

Erica’s review

I look back on this series and I want to throw the books because it started out SO good. The premise was cool – blood witches (Marionettes) become bodyguards to Royalty. Even how they use their magic is cool and unique. I loved the initial development of a forbidden romance with a little love triangle. But then a 4th was brought in…and all hell broke loose. Well, in the completely opposite boring way.

Katie confused me on which MMC I was actually rooting for. Which we like, right? Because, it’s usually made pretty damn clear by the end who we should be rooting for. But in this series, nope! So it feels like EITHER choice (it came down to 2 really at the end) was a bummer and no matter what, we maybe wanted her with the other person. Like, which relationship are we rooting for here? I don’t even think Katie really knew TBH… That really tainted the series for me. It just kind of unraveled and got messy at the end and that felt unnecessary when it was all going so right for 75% of the series!

I was torn between 2.5 and 3 but bumped it up because there are so many unique and cool aspects of this series and it’s my perfect 4 book length. Just know you might be left a little WTF-ish at the end.