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silverrae's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
Check the trigger warnings before reading this book.
This was the weakest of the series for me.
One of its biggest problems was pacing. The first 3rd was in Kyrie’s POV, and almost nothing happens. There’s a little development with her friend Layla, but most of that is through long, drawn-out dialogue (very tell, don’t show) much of which repeats the same points over and over. Multiple mentions of Layla being lonely, multi mentions of Kyrie nudging her toward another love interest to Layla’s annoyance, without any real development. Rinse and repeat.
Repeating information is at its worse in the Kyie’s POV, but when it switches to Layla’s POV (where it remains for the rest of the book.) But there was a specific scene where a character tells Layla something, to which Layla replies, “wait, does that mean you did ———?” And repeats exactly what the first character told her, almost verbatim, but she reacts as if she’s putting two and two together and wasn’t just directly told that yes, that was in fact what happened. (Trying not to spoil anything).
There was also a lot of unnecessarily detailed recapping of the previous books via character dialogue that felt completely unnatural, sprinkled in as late as THE LAST CHAPTER, which further bogged down the pacing.
Secondly, the characters were difficult for me to find likable. I liked Kyrie well enough in the first two books, but this painted her of more of a bad sister/friend/daughter in her own POV, so rather than her growing it felt like she regressed. There was little development with her relationship with Roth, which is fine because this book isn’t really about them.
However, if it was going to switch POV’s anyway why not just make the whole book on Layla’s POV? When we were looking through Kyrie’s eyes much of the focus was about Layla anyway. We miss a lot of the early development of Layla’s at first rocky relationship with the main love interest, then when we see things from Layla’s POV we don’t get a lot of their earlier interactions or they felt about each other or WHY they didn’t get along, and instead their relationship just skipped ahead to instalove. This makes it much harder to connect with them and believe in their relationship. And personally their rocky start sounded much more interesting then anything Kyrie had going on. Kyrie’s POV was such a slog that I almost DNFed until I read that it switches to Layla, and once it does the pace picks up dramatically and it became a more enjoyable read.
Honestly, I’m sure there were contractual obligations to make this trilogy, but it would’ve made more sense as a duology with this being a spin off book fully in Layla’s POV, which maybe helped with pacing and info dumping, but I digress.
Layla was likeable for me in small doses in the earlier installments. She was annoying in Kyrie’s POV in this one but more tolerable in her own POV. If you don’t like Layla though, you probably won’t like this book, making it feel disconnected from the rest of the series. There was a lot of info dumping of Layla’s past in the beginning of the book, again tell don’t show, in an attempt to make her a more sympathetic character, but it felt forced and overdone.
The ending was extremely anticlimactic, but I was already tipped off on that so it didn’t bother me much. It would’ve been fine for the end of this book as a stand-alone, but it wasn’t strong enough to bring closure to the whole trilogy.
All in all disappointing. The first book is worth the read, but you can skip the rest.
This was the weakest of the series for me.
One of its biggest problems was pacing. The first 3rd was in Kyrie’s POV, and almost nothing happens. There’s a little development with her friend Layla, but most of that is through long, drawn-out dialogue (very tell, don’t show) much of which repeats the same points over and over. Multiple mentions of Layla being lonely, multi mentions of Kyrie nudging her toward another love interest to Layla’s annoyance, without any real development. Rinse and repeat.
Repeating information is at its worse in the Kyie’s POV, but when it switches to Layla’s POV (where it remains for the rest of the book.) But there was a specific scene where a character tells Layla something, to which Layla replies, “wait, does that mean you did ———?” And repeats exactly what the first character told her, almost verbatim, but she reacts as if she’s putting two and two together and wasn’t just directly told that yes, that was in fact what happened. (Trying not to spoil anything).
There was also a lot of unnecessarily detailed recapping of the previous books via character dialogue that felt completely unnatural, sprinkled in as late as THE LAST CHAPTER, which further bogged down the pacing.
Secondly, the characters were difficult for me to find likable. I liked Kyrie well enough in the first two books, but this painted her of more of a bad sister/friend/daughter in her own POV, so rather than her growing it felt like she regressed. There was little development with her relationship with Roth, which is fine because this book isn’t really about them.
However, if it was going to switch POV’s anyway why not just make the whole book on Layla’s POV? When we were looking through Kyrie’s eyes much of the focus was about Layla anyway. We miss a lot of the early development of Layla’s at first rocky relationship with the main love interest, then when we see things from Layla’s POV we don’t get a lot of their earlier interactions or they felt about each other or WHY they didn’t get along, and instead their relationship just skipped ahead to instalove. This makes it much harder to connect with them and believe in their relationship. And personally their rocky start sounded much more interesting then anything Kyrie had going on. Kyrie’s POV was such a slog that I almost DNFed until I read that it switches to Layla, and once it does the pace picks up dramatically and it became a more enjoyable read.
Honestly, I’m sure there were contractual obligations to make this trilogy, but it would’ve made more sense as a duology with this being a spin off book fully in Layla’s POV, which maybe helped with pacing and info dumping, but I digress.
Layla was likeable for me in small doses in the earlier installments. She was annoying in Kyrie’s POV in this one but more tolerable in her own POV. If you don’t like Layla though, you probably won’t like this book, making it feel disconnected from the rest of the series. There was a lot of info dumping of Layla’s past in the beginning of the book, again tell don’t show, in an attempt to make her a more sympathetic character, but it felt forced and overdone.
The ending was extremely anticlimactic, but I was already tipped off on that so it didn’t bother me much. It would’ve been fine for the end of this book as a stand-alone, but it wasn’t strong enough to bring closure to the whole trilogy.
All in all disappointing. The first book is worth the read, but you can skip the rest.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Violence, Kidnapping, Gun violence, Cursing, and Blood
Minor: Abandonment, Alcohol, Death of parent, Cancer, Excrement, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Rape, Torture, Trafficking, Vomit, and War
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