A Tempest of Tea

          

Title: A Tempest of Tea

Series: Blood and Tea #1

Author: Hafsah Faizal

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), February 20, 2024

Pages: 338

Genre: YA Historical Paranormal

On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by night, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it—she can’t do the job alone.

Calling on some of the city’s most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the sinister, glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it. Dark, action-packed, and swoonworthy, this is Hafsah Faizal better than ever.

This was very fun. It's like King Arthur's Court meets Ocean's Eleven meets True Blood meets Peaky Blinders. So I had a really good time trying to find all of the little themes or Easter eggs in the story. A vampire in King Arthur's Court? It was so good.

Arthie is something else. I really loved her. Her whole aesthetic with the magenta hair and the page boy caps?! So hot. She's this entrepreneur, queen of secrets. I want to go to Spindrift during the day for a cup of tea, and I want to see it at night as the blood room. 

Then you have the whole heist of it all. Arthie pulls together her super crew, even though she's not sure she can trust them all exactly. Read. This. Book.

Ratings

Stars: 4/5