Queen of the Dead by Sarah Broadway

Timy reviews Queen of the Dead, a standalone urban fantasy novel by Sarah Broadway.

An eARC was received by Angry Robot Books in exchange for an honest review. Out now!

Possible fit for The Sound of Madness Reading Challenge 2025 prompts:

Joker prompt that goes with anything: Freed from Desire

Speaking with the dead is nothing new for Lou. It’s a curse she’s learned to hide from everyone – sometimes even herself. After running away from a past that took advantage of those abilities, Lou finally carves out a normal life for herself. That is, until she receives a mysterious message from a ghost – the Veil is thinning – and a cult of necromancers infiltrates her small town.
In a race to discover and defeat her foe, Lou learns she’s not alone in the fight. She grudgingly leans on her allies but wonders who to trust. What’s more impossible is suddenly finding herself the romantic interest of a man who somehow isn’t afraid of all the dark, creepy things about her… but even he has secrets for her to discover.

Time is running out, and reality seems to be slipping away. To save her new life and the people she loves, Lou must learn to accept who she is and embrace her true abilities, no matter where they might take her.

“You can’t let their stories drain you, eventually changing you into something hardened and numb. Or you can embrace them, giving yourself the allowance to feel all their sorrow, all their pain. You let it pass through you, accepting it. On the other side of acceptance comes compassion and understanding. And then you simply press on and keep living.”

I requested Queen of the Dead on a whim (which I completely forgot about until it showed up in my inbox thanks to the lovely Angry Robot Books publicists, whoops), because it sounded interesting, and we all know UF is close to my dark little heart. As far as I can tell, this is Broadway’s debut novel, so even if I wanted, I couldn’t have any expectations set for it, which is probably a good thing. This way, I was only mildly disappointed, and can peacefully go my own way after finishing it.

The setting is simple. We have Lou, a young lady in her early twenties, living in a small city, working in a grocery shop, and spending probably way more time in cemeteries than any other people. What makes her different is that she can see and talk to ghosts. We don’t really learn an awful lot about her besides some nuggets of her childhood and her mother who used her to her own ends, and that she has low self-esteem (somewhat understandably, I grant you), and her friendship with his lovely neighbor, Mortie. Who happens to be an empath. And the only queer character. Who was probably my favorite one, and he didn’t get nearly enough page time. And he got kind of sidelined in the last thirdish of the book, I should say, after fulfilling his role of usefulness. But then, I think this was my major issue with the Queen of the Dead – you never get the chance to really bond with any of the characters, they don’t seem to have a lot of depth, and they seemingly only appear when the plot needs them to be useful. Which, okay, this is how stories work, but as a reader, I shouldn’t be aware of this while reading. And while Mortie is sidelined, Lou goes and puts her trust into people whom she has either just met, barely knows, or, in Vick’s case, only appears when her psychic abilities tell her to, which is conveniently whenever Lou needs her.

Queen of the Dead builds on tropes and clichés; it has nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times before, and therefore it fails to be very interesting. It also doesn’t always make sense – like when Lou finds out – surprise, surprise! – that she is special even among the people who have all kinds of abilities, and she gets this title, but like, couldn’t she get called something more fitting? She is now called “queen” because she happens to be a woman, and also reasons. Whatever. And did I mention the romance plot yet? I was sooooo not buying that Lou and Scott have any chemistry whatsoever. Also, he was suspicious AF, so you could see from a mile that there is going to be something about him that makes him so “mysterious”. And creepy as hell. Red flags, anyone? But what do I know? It’s not like I have a lot more dating experience than Lou, but still. If you’ve read enough romance novels, you can spot all the signs and twists that are coming your way. Which is not a bad thing if you are looking for a book that has a feeling of familiarity and predictability. But I personally like to have a lot more actual mystery in my reads – murder mysteries/thrillers tend to be my favorite books for a reason.

I obviously had issues with this book – could you tell? – but I have to say, that despite all that, it’s super easy to read – even if I’m not sure if I wasn’t a fan of the writing or the editing side of things. And yes, I’ve been grumbling a lot, but I still read until the end, because I was invested enough to find out how the story ends. Although I think I mostly wanted to know what’s the deal with the book. Because yes, there is a book featured in Queen of the Dead, and trust a reader to be the most interested in that. And btw, was I supposed to feel any sort of empathy towards Ivan? I know, I know, I’m being cryptic, but I don’t want to spoil this book more than I already did.

To close off this slightly ranty review, Queen of the Dead is a quick, easy romantic fantasy romp that will appeal to people who don’t mind clichés and a bunch of tropes thrown together. It very lightly touches on topics of childhood traumas, found family, and discovering things about yourself you didn’t know. Unfortunately, these remain very light touchees indeed, never delving too deep, making the characters lacking, and thus hard to connect with. I couldn’t help feeling like I was reading an early version rather than an ARC copy, almost ready for publishing. But maybe I’m unfairly harsh to Queen of the Dead as I was myself in an editing frame of mind when reading, making me look at it with more critical eyes than usual. I guess we’ll never know. Either way, Queen of the Dead, while having an interesting setup, didn’t quite deliver what it promised on the surface.