liz ౨ৎ's Reviews > The Dagger and the Flame

➸ 5 stars

“In Fantome, shadows were dangerous. Anything could be hiding inside them. Anyone.”

— thank you to netgalley, the publishers, and the author for the arc in exchange for an honest review!

🗡️ enemies to lovers
🔥 thieves and assassins
🗡️ revenge
🔥 shade magic
🗡️ forbidden romance
🔥 forced proximity
🗡️ touch her and you die
🔥 found family

“The rule was simple: Daggers and Cloaks stayed out of each other’s way. Daggers didn’t thieve and Cloaks didn’t murder.”

In this epic enemies to lovers romantasy we have two rival groups, the Cloaks and the Daggers, the thieves and the assassins. In a deadly game of revenge, the most dangerous mistake of all is falling in love…

“Playing with magic was like playing with fire, and in the end, someone always got burned.”

immediately when i finished this book, i knew my review was going to be extremely long which unmotivated me to actually write it and i figured now that it’s release day i’d sit down and write it. it’s not my best and definitely a little sloppy since i read this a month ago so my memory is kinda iffy…

“When the world is at its darkest, we must reach bravely through the shadows to find where the light blooms.”

i absolutely LOVED this book. i devoured it and couldn’t get enough. it had everything i’d ever want in a romantasy and in my opinion the enemies to lovers was done SO WELL!! this was utterly ADDICTING and unputdownable. I loved the writing, the prose, the tropes were perfect and this book just has a tight grip on me! i’ll definitely be reading Catherine Doyle’s other books because i entirely fell in love with this one.

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“She would not cower. She would not be afraid.”

➺ seraphine - she’s the dreamer. the girl who wishes for freedom, for the kind of adventure she reads about in books, for a life that makes her feel like she’s truly living. i loved her so much. she’s strong and determined, but also softhearted. i loved seeing her just… try. i can’t forget to mention her dog pippin!!! he’s the cutest companion ever and a real one for always noticing someone lurking in the shadows…

“She was a woman now, a living flame of power and vengeance, and she was done hiding.”

after everything that happened at the beginning, i loved how determined seraphine was throughout this story and seeing her bravery was amazing!! i did guess one of the plot twists from the very beginning because it was very predictable but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment!!

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“Home is not just a place. It’s people. It’s family.”

“In such a short space of time, these people had become unimaginably important to her”

the side characters? AMAZING. bibi, val, and theo were the most amazing friends and provided humor to this story and i loved every second they were mentioned!! i wish i picked out quotes for them but trust me they’re funny, loyal, and theo is quite flirty!! i loved the found family that was starting to form here and i can’t wait to see more of it considering how the ending was set up!!

“Nothing in this world is ever black-and-white. What we do is not always who we are.”

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“The chase was his favorite part of a job. It turned Fantome into his own personal playground, every building a ladder, every shadow a slide.”

➺ ransom - the heir to the order of daggers. he is brutal, dangerous; taught to never indulge in sympathy, never feel and never hesitate on a kill. one even says he is death himself.

“Sometimes Ransom wandered until his heart ached, just to remind himself it was still there.”

he is also someone who’s shade powers consume him in an unhealthy way, eating him alive until one day there is nothing left. he is afraid. afraid to leave what he knows. afraid of the unknown. and afraid to be alone. i absolutely loved his character and the amount of emotion in here and i loved reading about him.

he is also hot LOL…

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‼️ these next parts will include a lot of quotes (mostly banter between the main characters) so if you’d like to know nothing about their dynamic feel free to skip (no direct spoilers to the story/plot ‼️

“Whatever she was doing, it irritated him.
“Get up,” me muttered. “Get up and run.”
Let me chase you.”

the entire cat and mouse game between them had me HOOKED and i loved every second of it. from the very first chapter we see the fmc running through the city and the mmc is secretly following her because she’s his target and that just set everything up so perfectly for the rest of the book and it just got even better after that!!!! someone was always lurking in the shadows…

“One eye was half bronze, as though whatever divine being had painted Seraphine Marchant had run out of sky, and had to reach, instead, for earth. She looked all the more interesting for it. And he was a fool for admitting it. For noticing it at all.”

the writing in that paragraph? BEAUTIFUL. I also loved how he immediately noticed her features and then proceeded to describe her eyes like that?! LOVE. IT.

let’s get into some banter now shall we ;)

“How long have you been following me.”
“Quite a while, but you already know that.”
“For a Dagger, you’re not exactly subtle.”
“He leaned forward and plucked a shard of glass from her hair. “For a Cloak, neither are you.”
“Stalker.”
“I prefer the term ‘assassin.’” he said, tossing it aside.”
“What about gutless prick?”
“No, I don’t think I like that one.”

every scene they had was filled with so much tension and i ate it up!!!! i was literally giggling and kicking my feet at EVERY interaction they had and i quite literally highlight full pages on my kindle and i think that’s going to be very obvious by how many quotes i use and i am not sorry about that because i have to include them all for myself. heh…

“He felt bad about having to kill her before—hesitated, even, and more than once—but now … Now, he really was going to murder her.”

“He almost felt sorry for her. But this was war, and she has drawn first blood. He had thirty-six stitches in his side to prove it.
So he dragged a finger across, and mouthed, I’m going to fucking kill you.”

i loved how in this book they actually tried to kill each other, wanted to kill each other and attempted it many times while also having all the murderous thoughts!! they are TRUE enemies and i was utterly obsessed!! knifes where used, stabs happened, punches were thrown, concussions occurred, blood made quite the appearance, you get what i mean ;)

“Nice try, spitfire.”
“Nasty nosebleed you’ve got there, Ransom.”
“Plenty more glass bottles where that one came from,”
“Truce?”
“No. Let’s talk.”
“I thought you wanted to kill me.”
“Believe it or not, I’m trying really hard to resist.”
“What was all that mouthing about at the Aurore, then? Foreplay?”
“Old habits.”

one thing i LOVED was how they started to call each other theirs… he was her dagger and she was his spitfire and it felt like they thought of each other that way subconsciously without even knowing they were doing it in a way and i absolutely LOVED IT.

“If Ransom had taken shade today, he would have leaped at golden boy Lorenzo like a panther and torn him off her.
Threatening Seraphine was his job.”

THE POSSESSIVENESS?!!!!! GAHHHHHHH OH MY GOD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH AND THIS MADE ME GIGGLE

“You missed my liver, Seraphine. If you come outside, I’ll let you trace my scar to prove it.”

“Careful, Dagger. I might burn you again.”
“Maybe I want to burn, spitfire.”

“Go to hell, Ransom.”
“Already there, Seraphine.”

they’re enemies… but he comes into enemy territory to stalk around the place she’s staying. they’re enemies but they send threatening letters through her high story bedroom window. they’re enemies, but they start to make each other laugh. they’re enemies, but he draws a picture of her in the moment. they’re enemies. but the letters start turning more humorous. they’re enemies, but they look forward to the letters. they’re enemies, but the lines are starting to blur. AHHHHHHH

“There you are. Enjoying the view?”
“You’re touching me.”
“Just trying to restore your pulse. It’s racing.”

WHEEEWW they made me so giggly and giddy istg

“Three times tonight, she has faced death. Three times he had saved her. And this time. he had the nerve to do it looking like that.”

the question now is whether to kiss or to kill. the lines are blurry. they start saving each other and start feeling concerned for each other. understanding is starting to form and he no longer wants to do what he’s been told to do…

“Seraphine was a spitfire. And Ransom wanted to burn.”

now time for some more exquisite banter

“If you want to kiss me, just say so.”
“You’re projecting, Ransom. You know I prefer stabbing you.”
“Maybe you’re right, maybe I want to know what that smart mouth tastes like.”

“You came back”
“After that kiss, did you really think I could stay away?”

i know there is a lot of quotes but trust me there are so many more moments like these in the book that didn’t quite make the cut into the review and they are yummy!

“And even though he was still a well-seasoned assassin and their truce teetered on the knife edge of their mutual curiosity, she felt like in that moment they were something else—two lost souls, left adrift in the same dark sea.”

“Ransom’s laughter burst out of him, catching flight and soaring up to the roof. It was music she could listen to over and over again.”

“He saw that fear—knew it as intimately as his own. And he wanted to take it from her. To shoulder it, until she could breathe again.”

“He only stared at her, as if she was the most precious thing he had ever seen. A slant of sunlight breaking through a storm. A lone star in a cloud-swept night.”

OH MY GODDDDD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH ITS INSANE


‼️THESE NEXT QUOTES ARE VERY SPOILERY SO PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVENT READ THE BOOK AND SOMEHOW COME ACROSS THIS REVIEW‼️


“Run away with me,” “Tonight. Tomorrow. Yesterday. I don’t care. We have the same dream. Let’s chase it together.”

“You still want to runaway with me? Even after everything that’s happened?”
“He was already nodding. “For ten years, I’ve prayed to Saint Oriel, asking her for a better life than this one. For a kinder fate. The courage to chase it. I never really believed she could hear me down here in the dark, or that even if she could, she would ever bend her ear to the pleas of a Dagger. I almost gave up. And then you came barreling over the horizon like a runaway sun. You shattered the darkness, Seraphine. And I realize now that all these years I wasn’t wishing for freedom. I was wishing for you.”

“His name felt like another secret between them. She liked what it did to his face, filling it with light, and a kind of beauty that was different from the brooding handsomeness she had come to know. It was like sunlight on the plains, the first fall of snow in the winter. It was hope for something beyond this night, beyond this place, and whatever that something turned out to be, she wanted to be a part of it.”

“Sera didn’t care about money. She only cared about the man with autumn-kissed eyes and ink-black hair whose smile knocked the breath from her lungs and whose kiss made her heart sing.”

IM SICKKKKKK SO SICKKKKKKK I LOVE THEM SO MUCH AMD THESE QUOTES ARE EVERYTHING TO ME. they were meant to find each other. they saved each other. I AM ON THE FLOOR CRYING UGH from the very beginning they had a connection to the dancing swan and the exact place they were at just seemed like fate. THE ENDING?! SICK ABSOLUTELY SICK i can’t wait for the next book but oh my gawd it’s gonna hurt!