This wasn’t my cup of tea at all I’m afraid. My biggest qualm with this book was the writing style. It was very, very weird in word choice and also1/5
This wasn’t my cup of tea at all I’m afraid. My biggest qualm with this book was the writing style. It was very, very weird in word choice and also structure. A chapter would end on a cliffhanger and the next one starts with our main character thinking about her childhood for 3 pages before getting back to telling us what’s going on, and it just sort of makes the anticipation not build up as much as it could have. The final sequence of the book being just talking was an interesting choice, just as not describing the battle scene was. I can’t say that I found the romance cute because I didn’t honestly think that Misery and Lowe interacted enough throughout the book for it to be believable. Would Lowe have even loved her if she hadn’t been his mate?? I personally found Misery to be insufferable but whether that was her personality or the atrocious first person writing style of this is the true question, and it’s likely a mix of both. I really enjoyed ‘The Love Hypothesis’ and I’ll likely stick to Ali’s rom com books in the future!...more
Thank you so much to Maggie for the e-ARC! This was a fantastic conclusion to Scarlett and Rune’s story. It’s dark and hard to read at times, but i4/5
Thank you so much to Maggie for the e-ARC! This was a fantastic conclusion to Scarlett and Rune’s story. It’s dark and hard to read at times, but it is also a tale of discovering who *you* are in your soul and coming into your full power. Scarlett’s journey was so amazing to read. As always, the romance was extremely sweet, and it felt very believable as well. All in all, this was a great conclusion to the Eternal Obsession Duet, and I have a feeling Kylo will be getting a novel next ...more
So saddened to give this book a lower rating than the first one but I truly just did not enjoy it as much. The story lacks urgency and the stakes f3/5
So saddened to give this book a lower rating than the first one but I truly just did not enjoy it as much. The story lacks urgency and the stakes feel so low. The writing is beautiful as always, but I didn’t feel an emotional connection to any of the characters this time around. I felt like there was very little plot to be found in this book and that the ending came out of nowhere with characters I had little memory of from book 1 suddenly becoming very important. The ending made zero sense to me and I don’t know how any of those events will feed into book 3 or how any of these plot lines will eventually connect. I unfortunately just felt like this book had a lot of filler and limited character development to justify the whole lot of nothing that happened.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the e-ARC!...more
My review got deleted after 20 minutes of writing. So I’m pissed off.
This book was awful, and a les1/5
Thanks to NetGalley and bloom books for the arc.
My review got deleted after 20 minutes of writing. So I’m pissed off.
This book was awful, and a less than stellar sequel to bewitched, which was a favourite of mine last year.
Selene loses all edge she has to her character after her main adversity in book 1 is removed. She is stupid and does foolish things the whole book, never thinks, and acts immature 24/7, never wondering why she keeps getting into awful situations.
Memnon is reduced to just loving Selene and having no personality of his own.
The romance is shitty. Selene has control over Memnon’s will and implies she can control him sexually more than once. This is very non consensual and gross that she would think such a thing, let alone say it. This leads to lots of rather odd smutty scenes where the line between consent and non consent blurs at times because she can make him do whatever anyways.
The plot doesn’t come in until 70% through, by which is goes at a very fast pace to make up for its lack of presence at the beginning. The plot lacked a sense of urgency and had no twists at all.
The character of Kane was very stupid. He tries to get Selene to love him after multiple rejections and always tries to undermine her relationship with Memnon. He is disrespectful and always looking for a way to make her see how bad Memnon is so he can claim her himself.
The cliffhanger is laughably boring. I literally said ‘who cares?’ After reading it. The implications are next to zero and they provide 0 clues as to what a third book could even entail. So Memnon has a company now. Who cares???
All in all, this was a lacklustre sequel that left much to be desired....more
Thank you to the publisher, NetGalley, and Olivia Rose Darling for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!
No part of me is happy to be giving t2/5
Thank you to the publisher, NetGalley, and Olivia Rose Darling for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!
No part of me is happy to be giving this book this review because I’ve been wanting to read it for YEARS, literally since it was being written by Olivia. I never got to reading the indie version (mood reader curse, I’m afraid) but I jumped at the chance to read the newly revised version that’s going out for traditional publishing. Unfortunately, not even the editor could completely salvage this book.
I found the writing itself to not be by any means bad, but rather clearly that of a debut author. There was a lot of detailed descriptions of locations that just sounded like listing everything around Elowen instead of immersing the reader, and there was a lot of telling us what characters did or liked but we never saw these interests on page. Elowen likes to read smut and garden! Great but we see her read once in this book and she doesn’t garden at all.
The side characters, for the amount of page time they get, are remarkably well fleshed out and developed, so points there! But our main character, Elowen? Oh I despised her. She’s written so flatly that the only thing she thinks of is getting revenge on her father. Seriously. All her inner monologue is thinking of how she’ll exact revenge and see her dragons again, but she never actually makes the plans herself for said revenge?? She just lets someone else plan everything she’ll do. And when she’s not feeling bloodthirsty, she either desperately wants to get drunk (I don’t think I’ve read a fantasy that has one POV where the character goes drinking this often??? In multi POVs, yes, but when we only have one POV and she’s not sober for a good chunk of chapters… it’s such an odd choice. I was wondering why they kept going to taverns when they had a heist to plan) or she’s thinking of wanting to have sex. Literally no in between. If Elowen is being written to have a villain arc, this book sets her up wonderfully for it. Her unchecked ambition and desire for more all the time is pretty Macbeth-esque. But I suspect she isn’t going to end up being a villain, so it makes little sense to me why she’s characterized like this.
The love interest, Cayden Veles, has about the depth of a puddle. He spends his time either looking extremely angry or he’s just staring at Elowen. This man is fully obsessed with her, to the point where it becomes his only personality trait. Everything he does is for her, he puts her above everyone else, and just seems to have no personality that doesn’t revolve around Elowen. He is the commander of this country. How was he able to spend 3 days taking care of Elowen after she gets drugged??? Does he not have a job??? The way he spoke to his boss was just ridiculous like that’s not how it works at all?? His dialogue is either a joke about getting into bed with elowen, saying how much he loves her, saying how he’s about to kill some one for her, or how good she looks in his bed. I was just constantly wondering who he was outside of Elowen and violence.
The plot is so poorly developed that I was shocked. The main heist of this book takes up maybe 3 chapters at the 85% mark and is laughably easy for the characters to do. Random monsters of the world pop up for action sequences, and Elowen just happens to run into a cult that gives her the powerful amulet she needs to free her dragons. Everything was so convenient. After they easily free the dragons, the bond was super anti-climactic like she couldn’t even talk to them?? Maybe it’s just me but guys she has FIVE dragons. She should have some cool power too at least. Also, I have to say again how dumb Elowen is. It’s so frustrating to see her do nothing the whole book. She nearly gets killed TWICE by assassins and always lets someone else do most of the hard work into tracking them down, until she figures out where the mastermind is - a brothel! So then she and Cayden have to pretend to be getting it on (which leads to a confusing scene where he quite literally takes her to the main room of the brothel and they’re like making out fully. And then go back to a private room to actually get each other off and somehow this lures the assassin out????) and the plot feels like tropey scenes stringed together. There were so many moments that could be amazing if it didn’t seem as if they’d been written for the purpose of being taken out of context to promote the book. I also am unsure of how this will be a four book series. The plot doesn’t seem to be that difficult to grasp and there is such a lack of dimension to it that I’m not even sure what book 2 will fully be about. The ending of this book is almost laughable in how plainly unrealistic it is, even for a fantasy novel.
The romance was lacklustre. The banter was subpar, Cayden fell in love at first sight so it was the opposite of a slow burn, and the author tried to frame it as a forbidden romance but I just couldn’t buy it. The sex scenes were also really boring and uninspired. I just couldn’t get behind how these characters came to love each other because we’re told that they do instead of seeing that love on page. Love is made out of the small things, and I felt we only got big gestures - nothing that shows how Elowen and Cayden were soulmates on all levels. I didn’t get the quiet devotion or steady presence that I think love truly is. (And I did see the foreshadowing of them being some form of mates.)
The world is interesting but the magic system was so light that it was non existent. Since we’re in a country that has banned magic, we don’t see a lot of it so I was left very confused over how it was used, who could use it, and more. We’re told that there are gods for every element, but the religion is never developed. What were the gods like before they left earth? Why are they worshipped? How are they worshipped? Everything just fell super flat to me. We’re told these things are there, but I couldn’t immerse myself in the world because we didn’t have any of the little details that truly bring these things to life.
I also found the editing to be poorly done, oddly since this is a traditionally published version of the novel. There were several instances where the characters would be doing something and then the next paragraph they’d be moving into another room or have some object in their hands that they’d be using and I was often confused as to how that object had gotten there or why they were moving around.
I unfortunately won’t be continuing this series, but I am interested in whatever Olivia has plans for beyond this series....more
☀︎El In Oz☀︎
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