Heart So Fierce and Broken

reread update 2022: I feel the same way about this book now as when I first read it. There are a lot of charming characters but also a lot of flaws. It's very much meh.

Initial Thoughts:

Real talk, the epilogue saved this book.

Spoiler Free Review:

What a strange sequel this is. Do not go into this expecting to love it for the same reasons you loved the first book, otherwise you will find yourself feeling disillusioned with the story - this very much feels like it's part of a completely different series.

Grey is one of the perspectives we get in this book, and it's a welcome one if you wanted to learn more about Grey in ‘A Curse So Dark and Lonely'. We learn a lot more about Grey's past, his ambitions and hopes, and we do get to see what he really feels and what his true opinions separate from Rhen's are. He is a far more complex character in this book.

Lia Mara is also the other perspective we mainly read from in this sequel. She's an interesting YA female heroine and Kemmerer makes sure to explore the complexity of her situation thoroughly. She is different from Harper so it's nice I can distinguish between two female voices in a YA novel, as sometimes it's hard with certain authors.

However, do not go into this books expecting to see a lot of Rhen or Harper, or even to like them in this book because they're not there a lot - and when they are you'll wish they weren't. However, Kemmerer does expand on other characters featured in the first book and does introduce several more characters who are captivating in their own rights.

If you are expecting a book full of fast pace action packed adventure, find a different book. This is slow paced and doesn't contain a lot of fight scenes, but I think it's setting itself up for a bigger fight in the next book. It can be sluggish at times and the pacing is a little slow, the only thing that powered me through this novel was being unable to sleep one night and finishing at 2am.

However, this book has a certain charm to it I'm unable to put into words; something in here kept me reading, and I'm unsure of what it was.

This book is very much a filler-book for the trilogy(?), but all be it a necessary one. I just can't help but wonder if there wasn't a way to compact this book into book one or three. Although, I would recommend you read this just so you know what's going on If you really want to read the whole series, if you weren't big on the first book then move on because this probably isn't for you.

Spoiler Review:

hahah what was this?

Everything I enjoyed about the first book didn't exist here: the characters (particularly Rhen and Harper), the retelling of ‘Beauty and The Beast', the pacing, the idea of what love meant and what is was. All of that didn't exist in this book and I'm not sure why considering it is a sequel.

Everytime I read the name ‘Harper' I was like



I don't know who the girl who called ‘Harper' was in this but she was not the ‘Harper' we all knew and loved from ‘A Curse So Dark and Lonely'. We get one chapter from her perspective and the only times we hear from her after that is when she's hanging off of Rhen's arm or apologising for his actions. Where is the girl who basically jumped out of a window from book one? Because this wasn't her, this was some girl who sat by and did nothing as Rhen tortured their friend and a little boy needlessly. She was so weird in this, and I hope Kremmerer redeems herself with the Harper we all love in book three.

Rhen as well was weird, and like I said in my initial thoughts the epilogue saved this - and it certainly saved Rhen. I'm not going to use the epilogue to excuse all of Rhen's actions because some of them were so cruel and unlike the man we grew slowly to know in the first book. As well as that, in book one he didn't bow to everything Lilith suggested, he let himself be tortured instead of Grey - and we're expected to believe everything he did was influenced by Lilith from one small epilogue? I don't think so, I need to know more and I'm also not sure how Kemmerer is going to redeem this character for a second time.

Their romance was strange in this book too if you look at how their romance developed in the first book, they felt like a completely different couple in this one. We spent the whole of the first book building up the romance to get to the end and read Harper confessing she wasn't sure if she was in love with Rhen or not, but in this book they are devoted to each other and very much in love - Jake even says Harper will never leave Rhen because she loves him that much. That's quite a jump to make in two months.

As well as this, I think Kemmerer spent a lot of this book trying to undo the almost love triangle she built in book one, because lets be real here, Grey and Harper had a lot more chemistry in ‘A Curse So Dark and Lonely'; here's my problem with that: if you're built a love triangle, commit to it , don't try to undo it because it won't make sense. I think that's why Kemmerer wrote in Lia Mara for this second book, because other than being a romantic interest for Grey she didn't play a huge role until the very end. The author even had Lia Mara ask Grey TWICE why he and Harper weren't together - it was a very unsubtle way of shoving the Rhen/Harper ship down out throats.

I also didn't enjoy the plot or pacing of this novel. I found this really dragged because there was nothing happening. I read this as part of a buddy read and once it was over we had a really difficult time talking about what actually happened in terms of plot - because there wasn't much going on. It's very much a background story for book three, and I won't know until I read book three whether or not it would have been possible to merge this with the next book.

Now, there were things I liked about this book. I was really excited to read from the perspective of Grey and to learn more about him and the kind of character he is. He's evidently very sweet and a nurturing character and I enjoyed that (maybe I'm just a sucker for ‘looks like they could kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll' archetype). I know not everyone liked Grey's character in this, they thought it was too different from what was featured in ‘A Curse So Dark and Lonely', but I think it fits what was hinted at in book one as his personality, especially now that he's a free man and he's accepted his background and heritage.

Whilst Lia Mara served no real purpose in this book except to be Grey's love interest and at the very end where she killed her mother, I did actually like her. She and Harper are alike, but also different, and I want to see them become friends in the next book. I also really enjoyed the focus on a sister relationship from Lia Mara's perspective that felt fairly realistic and honest.

I enjoyed the new characters introduced in this. Iisak and Tycho were both great characters and it was nice to see Tycho's growth and to learn more about the world Kemmerer's built through Iisak. I'm excited to see how Tycho continues to grow in book three, but believe me when I say I will riot if Kemmerer kills him off. Also, I'm hoping Iisak's son is somehow involved in the plot of book three because Iisak and his son's situations are very interesting and I want to see more of them - I just don't know how it would tie in.

As well as this, I'm glad we learnt more about Jake and Noah in this sequel and they became their own people, rather than Harper's brother and his boyfriend. There was a nice focus on friendship with Grey and Jake, and I appreciated the discussions of friendship based on the two of them and also Rhen.

I also think it'd be ill of me not to mention this trilogy (I think it's a trilogy) so far seems to be fairly white, and therefore falls under the same problem we have with a lot of YA fantasies for their lack of diversity. I don't want to judge Kemmerer too harshly for this yet as the series is not completed, but it's something I have my eye on as a reader.

Overall, this was a real strange read. It's obviously a filler book and not a lot happens, especially not with the characters you grew to love in the first book. But Kemmerer does add several new characters that are great (she writes very good characters) and topics I enjoyed reading about.