Em

⭐⭐⭐⭐ (3.75 Stars)

3.75 rounded up. I have a lot of thoughts about this book!

First, the good stuff:

- The story took a while to hook me in, but in the end really delivers. I’m glad this is a planned duology and I will definitely read book 2 next summer!

- I can’t say that I really loved either of our main characters…and I kind of love that? They both have a lot of flaws, and I found myself rooting for each of them at different times, and then a few chapters later one or both would give me an “ick” or an eye roll moment.

- I’d like more of Eamonn, please! Best part of the book — well, him and Fox. I wished he was more of a constant companion, but I loved every moment where he made an appearance, even as convenient as most of them were.

- I guessed a few of the reveals, but I did really like that Madinia had lost memories too! Ones that apparently she didn’t even know about in the prior book series? I’m guessing there, but it sounded like it.

- I liked the dual POV! It was always funny when one Madinia chapter would be followed by Calysian and their thoughts about each other were completely opposite.

Next, the things I struggled with…SPOILERS…

- Calysian is a whole bunch of red flags, but he’s a god, so I get the possessive trope. I actually found his struggle to stay “human” even as he gained more power super interesting, but I’m not sure it was executed perfectly. It just felt like there was something missing about that part of the story — I think maybe we need to learn more about his siblings and their beef with him. In the flashbacks when he was fully Calpharos, he seemed to be more like Calysian is with Madinia, so why would gaining his power make him kind of evil? I mean I can think of several ways to explain that but I wish there was a little more detail about that.

- I had some issues with the writing in this one. The character development felt shallow, especially at the beginning. I’ll concede that this got better as the book went along.

- The characters covered A LOT of ground in this book, so it felt pretty choppy at times, like the transitions from one thing to the next happen abruptly and without a lot of detail. I’m going to guess there is more world building in the first series, since this is a spin off. I felt like I was trying to figure out what kind of world we were in a little bit at a time, which was just a little challenging.

- The choice of words in the dialogue was tough for me. I thought most of it felt pretty modern so when a random word or phrase that sounded way more old world was thrown in, it kind of took me out of the story and world.

- This book could have used one or two more rounds of edits to catch a couple of the mistyped sentences or sections where the same word or phrase is used over and over again. I highlighted several of those as I went, it’s just a little thing that also takes me out of the story.

Overall, a fun book with a good story line that I’ll be looking forward to completing!