*This post may contain affiliate links, meaning we earn a small commission if you make a purchase through links on our site. This is at no additional cost to you.
I just finished Lexi Ryan’s These Hollow Vows, and I have so many thoughts and feelings (and fictional crushes hehe)!
Do I feel like this book is vaguely a rip-off of ACOTAR? Yeah, for sure.
However, I do find most of my days being spent trying to find books that fill the ACOTAR-shaped void in my mind, so maybe it’s my own fault for looking for Fae fantasy romance books at all times.
This book is filled with love triangles, morally grey bad boys to fall in love with, best-friends-to-lovers, betrayals, and humans with magic powers having to choose between two Fae males!
It also features one of my LEAST favorite fictional characters, Sebastian! But, who is this terrible character (that I DO NOT LIKE)?
So, who is Sebastian in These Hollow Vows? Sebastian is Brie’s (Abriella’s) neighbor, and is an apprentice to the mage. It is also revealed that he is, in fact, Prince Ronan of the Seelie Court. Not only is he a Fae male and not human, but he is also the crown prince.
Let’s take a deeper dive into this character and find out more about his role in These Hollow Vows!
(Also, major spoilers for These Hollow Vows ahead!)
What Do We Know About Sebastian/Prince Ronan in These Hollow Vows?
We are first introduced to Sebastian when he sneaks into Brie and Jas’s shared room that they rent from Madam V. Brie and Jas are both very poor, which causes Brie to steal from wealthy people (a real lady Robin Hood situation).
Sebastian is their next-door neighbor who Brie has a big fat crush on (she likes to ogle him as he trains with his sword). We are, as the reader, supposed to assume that he feels platonically towards Brie.
Jas wants to go to the Seelie court to attend a ball where the Fae Prince will choose a human bride (humans are more fertile). Brie being a hater of the Fae, does not want to go but eventually agrees to accompany her sister.
Sebastian is NOT pleased. We are supposed to assume it’s because he’s being protective, but it turns out that this boy (or should I say male?) is straight-up playing her.
After Jas is sold into slavery to the King of the Unseelie Court, Brie decides to go to the Fae realm and find her sister.
Sebastian tells her to wait, insisting that he can take care of it. He also gives her a little kiss before he leaves for his apprenticeship (lies!!!), though he is really going to the Seelie court because he’s the PRINCE!
Brie doesn’t realize that Sebastian is the Prince of the Golden Court until her second day in the Fae realm when she runs into him. She first believes that he has a glamor on to make him look Fae, but he then tells her the truth of him being actually Fae.
He claims he didn’t tell her because she is a known hater of the Fae due to her mommy issues, but still, he is a LIAR. They share a little kiss again!
And that is just when servants come up to him and are all “your majesty” and so on, and Brie then realizes that Sebastian is not truly Sebastian, or Bash as she likes to call him.
He is, in fact, Prince Ronan.
Now, I saw this coming. Especially when he asked Brie if, when she got to the Fae realm, she found the prince to be someone she could like.
Here is what I did not see coming, though…
Once Brie has saved Jas and is reunited with Sebastian, she agrees to do the bonding ceremony with him and become bonded to him.
On the day of their bonding, Sebastian tells her that if she were to die during the ceremony, it would save her life and turn her into a Fae.
Brie does, in fact, die. After she is saved and turned Fae, she begins to question how Sebastian would know that she would die.
WELL, it turns out that Sebastian is both Unseelie and Seelie, so he knew that Brie would die because of the curse on the Unseelie Court.
Sebastian had used his magic so that no one would speak of this till after Brie became Fae, and now that they are bonded, he has claimed the Unseelie crown that Oberon gave Brie to save her life, and Sebastian/Rowan is King of both courts.
So he was playing her the whole time!
He has such a nice guy gross-out vibe to me the whole book, so I was pleased that he had more to him than just being obsessed with Brie. It also was such a delightful cliffhanger, and I cannot wait to read the next book!
Are Finn And Sebastian Brothers?
ALSO, we do find out at the end of the book that because Sebastian/Bash/Prince Ronan is Unseelie and Seelie, he has a brother (kind of)!
Yep! Finn and Sebastian are half-brothers (which is slightly weird). Brie has to choose between two brothers!
All in all, this book, to me, feels a bit like the Folk of the Air series and Sarah J. Maas’s books had a baby, but if this baby had slightly underdeveloped characters and a rushed plot.
I did love that throughout the whole book, there were little breadcrumbs of information being fed to me, and it kept me reading late into the night because I was so curious.
The sign of a good book (well, maybe not good, but definitely fun) to me is if I pull at least one all-nighter or close to all-nighter reading it. By that standard, this book would definitely qualify as good/fun to me!
Other Articles From PaisleyReads: Dance Of Thieves – The Ultimate Summary & Guide