The ​Crown of Gilded Bones

3.5 Rounded to 3

Where do I start ... this is a difficult one for me to review because I absolutely loved the first book in this series, From Blood and Ash. It has humor, romance, strong female lead (surviving all sorts of crazy) and man oh man those fight scenes!!

Enter Book 2, and the love died just a tad. I could only take so much of the relentless references to Poppy and her love of stabbing. It got old fast.

Then here we have The Crown of Gilded Bones, and it started off with a BANG. I was hopeful for this installment but that quickly soured as it just went on and on, with the same old tired dialogue and repetitive jokes and formula from the first 2 books. I was honestly hoping for much more with regard to Poppy and her evolvement but alas it took almost the entire 500+pgs for that to really come out. Made for a pretty boring read for about 90% of this book.

Honestly, a couple hundred pages could have been cut out and this would have been fine. Makes me wonder how in the world this is going to drag out into 5/6 total books.

I will say, this author can write a fight scene and those are my favorite parts. It's hard to sit still when the action hits the pages. I also love Kieran. He is a fun character and it was nice to connect with him more as he begins to play a larger role.

Also, the ending??!! Now THAT'S the Poppy I want to see more of and I'm hoping STAYS. Her constant affirmation-seeking from Cas was tiresome. I mean it's Book 3 and they have come a long way. SHE has come a long way. She should be confident and strong with or without him by her side. Hopefully that flows over into the next book.