Holy Terrors

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After what seems like an age since I discovered that Little Thieves is a trilogy and ecstatically bought the remaining two books, I have now been able to hunker down and read the final instalment in the thrilling adventures of Vanja Ros: Holy Terrors.

After banishing the vengeful ghost of her mother who has haunted her for years, Vanja is slowly coming to terms with who she is as a person. Still unable to believe that she won’t be used against Emeric in his career, she has chosen to go it alone and has made a new name for herself as the Pfennigeist: helping those that the law cannot. After one particularly irksome job, Vanja discovers that there is a serial killer tearing through the country’s royalty. Normally this would not concern her, except that the killer is leaving her signature red penny on all the victims and the Pfennigeist is fast becoming a villain rather than folk hero. In order to save her name (and herself), Vanja has to team up once again with Emeric Conrad after breaking his heart a second time.

The final instalment in Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves trilogy is every bit as exciting and intriguing as its predecessors: a ghoulish fantasy-whodunnit with an underlying love story and journey of self-discovery. All our favourite characters return for a thrilling final adventure in which everyone is in mortal peril every single minute.

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Following the classic themes and formula of the whodunnit, Holy Terrors elevates the genre by being a noir thriller set against a delightfully macabre Scandinavian fantasy background. While a few modern musical throwbacks jerk you out of the world for a minute, Owen’s delightful banter between characters as well as her rapidly flowing prose guarantees total immersion and memorable scenes that cause you to exclaim out loud.

If the book falls down anywhere, it would probably be with the introduction of a comic-book narrative trope that is just everywhere at the moment (obviously I don’t want to spoil anything). There are also a number of places in which major plot twists or dramatic reveals don’t feel like they land the way there were intended to, either because they were nonchalantly dropped onto the table or were not sufficiently set up to achieve the desired response.

But having said that, Holy Terrors is still a wonderfully intriguing and action-packed end to a refreshingly different type of YA fantasy novel. Filled with suspense, gore, humour, romance, solid character development, and practically everything in between, it’s very easy to fly through its five hundred plus pages in no time at all!

Author: Margaret Owen, 2025

Published: Hodder & Stoughton, a Hachette Uk Company, Great Britain, 2025.