Ella

I did like this one a bit more than the previous one. More action focused and less relationship drama. My issue at this point in the series is just that I don't enjoy that it's always Kate and Curran together, I miss the more independent Kate and her having solo stories. I get this one was probably about showing the strength of their relationship after the drama of the last book, but idk I don't hate Curran but I have enjoyed these books primarily for the action and Kate, and the romance was secondary. I don't really like how reliant she is on Curran now and how they did everything together in this one.

just really lame and amateur.

I really loved Hugh's character in the main series even though he was evil, so I was looking forward to reading him as the protagonist here, but this one fell a bit flat for me. The relationship between him and Elara was a typical fantasy novel enemies to lovers situation and didn't have anything extra special to it. I also felt like Hugh lost a bit of his prior characterisation and just fell into a standard antagonistic lover role. Too heavy on the antagonism too between them, not enough actual buildup of their relationship. 

I was worried this would be a boring filler book after the crazy events of the last one, but I think this might be my favourite in the series so far! It was a filler book in a way to transition Curran out of the beast lord role, with a lower stakes enemy, but I loved that Kate was back to being regular Kate instead of the consort role that was putting me off a bit the last couple of books. The humour was on point too. My only complaint is really just that I miss Derek, he has been seriously sidelined since his injury in book 3? 4? He was such a good character and I feel like they weren't sure what to do with him after that and he got replaced with other sidekicks like Ascanio or Andrea. I hope they do something interesting with his character before the series ends. 

so bad. the politics in this are so unbelievably childish. and politics is discussed A LOT. this is how i imagine those people who were wearing Notorious RBG shirts back in 2018 view the democrats. of course the characters and writing are awful too but i wasn't expecting an amazing piece of literature, but the forced wow our president just wants to help people 🫶 that's her only motivation 🫶 and everyone loves that seeing how america is today is just eyeroll inducing