A Steep and Savage Path

My first read of the new year is A Steep and Savage Path by JJA Harwood. I slowly read this over the holidays, getting absorbed into the Transylvania and underworld settings. After a bad fall, Irina’s seven-year-old sister Catalina is alive physically, but her soul is trapped in the underworld. Irina is sure that, if she can go into the land of Death and retrieve Catalina’s soul, her sister will be saved. But she needs a guide to get into Death. So Irina solves a local village’s vampire problem by marrying the undead, Stefan, and convincing him to take her into Death. In exchange, he can drink as much of her blood as he wants. Wary as they are of each other, Irina and Stefan slowly start to care about each other as they journey through Death. But can their budding relationship survive in the real world… if they even get out alive?

What I Liked:

Romanian setting. I haven’t read nearly enough books set in Romania! In A Steep and Savage Path, I enjoyed getting a sense of the culture, foods, and beliefs around the afterlife. Most of the book actually takes place in the underworld, but the influence of Romanian customs still felt present throughout.
Going into the land of Death! Another book setting I don’t see enough: the underworld. Most of this novel is set in Death, with Irina and Stefan traveling between the various realms, trying not to get caught. The world-building here is so well done, from how everything feels just a little off, a bit artificial. The doors and rivers (inspired by Greek mythology and the Aeneid!) make their journey so much harder, as do the people around who don’t remember they’re dead unless Irina touches them. Much of the storytelling around the dead souls walks the line between macabre and darkly humorous.
Saving a misplaced soul. Another aspect that reminded me of Greek mythology was Irina’s intention to find her sister’s soul and bring her back to life. Her little sister, Catalina, isn’t dead, but her soul is wrongly in the land of Death. Irina is determined to search all of Death until she finds and rescues Catalina.
Slow burn romance. Irina’s guide is her undead vampire husband, Stefan. Monstrous? Maybe. But I loved seeing them get to know each other and learn the truth of their character. Stefan’s backstory is tragic, and like Irina, I found myself liking him more and more as we got to know him. They have a long path of enemies-to-lovers, a mix of marriage of convenience and fake dating, and the slowest burn, but the payoff is there. I liked this couple a lot!

What Didn’t Work for Me:

Character dialogue was incongruous with time setting. Though the year is never explicitly stated, based on recent events Irina mentions, A Steep and Savage Path is set in the 1790s. Yet the way she and Stefan talk to each other sounds very modern, which took me out of the story quite a bit. I don’t normally care about anachronisms too much, but in this book, I did find it jarring.
They’re also so snappy with each other. Irina is so quick to anger! Most of the arguments between Stefan and Irina feel a bit forced. I get being temperamental, but this was just unreasonable. Maybe this is indicative of their age (late teens), but the first half of the book was kind of frustrating for me.

Final Thoughts

A Steep and Savage Path had a lot of great elements, though it could have been executed a little differently. If this book was more firmly set in the 1790s, and if the characters were more mature, this would have been excellent! I loved the plot, themes, and world-building; I just wish the characters felt more believable. This book was a bit middle of the road for me, but I’m interested in reading more from JJA Harwood. I have The Shadow in the Glass on my shelf already, so I hope to read that soon.

Special thanks to Harper 360 and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy A Steep and Savage Path here – it’s available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

A Steep and Savage Path by JJA Harwood
Audience	Adult
Genre	Romantasy
Setting	Romania; Underworld
Number of Pages	384
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	December 30, 2025
Publisher	Magpie

Official Summary

From the SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author of THE THORNS REMAIN comes an enemies-to-lovers journey to the underworld unlike any other, for fans of THE CRIMSON MOTH and THE CRUEL PRINCE

An immortal vampire. A mortal bride. A vow that even death can’t break.

Irina is about to be married to a dead man. She is the willing village sacrifice for the Wedding of the Dead: a desperate ritual designed to lay the hungry vampire that has been terrorising her Transylvanian village to rest. Irina’s beloved sister’s soul is trapped in the land of the dead. If Irina can retrieve it, she could bring her back – but Irina would need a guide, one who can walk between the living and the dead.

Irina strikes up a deal with her new husband – if he agrees to get her safely there and back again, then he can drink her blood as much as he wants.

They begin a perilous journey through the afterlife together, in which Irina realises Stefan isn’t the cruel and terrifying monster that she thought. In a land of three-headed beasts, winged creatures and walking corpses, the last thing Irina would have expected was to fall in love.

Only, Irina learns that by bringing Stefan to the land of the dead she has put him in grave danger, and will be faced with an impossible choice. Will they be able to make it out, undead or alive?

About the Author

JJA Harwood is an author, editor and blogger. She grew up in Norfolk, read History at the University of Warwick and eventually found her way to London, which is still something of a shock for somebody used to so many fields.

When not writing, she can be found learning languages, cooking with more enthusiasm than skill, wandering off into clearly haunted houses and making friends with stray cats. THE SHADOW IN THE GLASS was her debut novel.