1.12k reviews for:

Cursebound

Saara El-Arifi

3.94 AVERAGE

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous emotional tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
adventurous mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

bruh this is 100% a triology that was originally a duology but the publisher made the author stretch out. seriously. almost all of the big plot points involve people introduced in the book that werent even properly foreshadowed about in the previous book. everything just felt so self contained and so boring. i will say this is much better as an audiobook rather than reading


everything forward will be a spoiler so watch out.



so first off, what happened to rayan? hes so watered down yet so looked up at in this book. i remember really liking him but hes just such a watered down character compared to last book. i guess being king does that?

secondly, i thought this book was getting really interesting when yeeran finally went back to waning and had her thing with salawa. especially when it came to going back to mosima!! then furi kills her and yeeran is just OKAY WITH THIS???????????? like shes sad for 30 minutes and then is like well furi wants whats best for me so its okay that she killed the woman i loved for years :) WHAT??? i also feel like things could have gotten so interesting romance wise if she didnt die but i guess the author didnt have a good reason why yeeran would choose furi over salawa so lol just remove her entiriely. this is honestly my biggest gripe with the book and the entire time i was thinking how boring everything was now that salawa was gone

thirdly, the romance in this book is awful. i already said rayan is so watered down, mainly bc he and lettle just never interact in this book. also furi and yeeran bc of what was mentioned above. and the new romance between alder and golan is just SOOOO BORING. its instalove and not even believable. they just started making eyes at each other and i was like where did this come from?? seriously?? also wasnt golan complicit in killing the queens the last book?? why is he still here??

I also laughed out loud at the free the light initiative. if youre going to make a political book dont make it so corny


anyways the ending wasnt crazy enough for me to want to continue but maybe i will when the next book comes out
adventurous emotional hopeful

I love series but this one has dragged on more than others that are world building.  so far I think the series could be shorter but I still have enjoyed the storyline so far.
adventurous mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

The beginning two thirds of this book really felt like the author was vamping for time. Like she had an idea for two awesome books, but the publisher wanted three.
I understand that Lettle is destined to kill her kingly boy toy, and I know Yeeran has regrets over leaving the fae realm. I didn't need it reiterated to me every other page.
The last third was very enjoyable. 
adventurous emotional lighthearted fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
adventurous mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A

This picked up right where Faebound left off. I was thrown straight back into the world and the characters I came to love. I loved the edition of the journal-style recap of Faebound at the beginning of the book. I loved the new POVs we got in this one, especially from Furi and Alder. I do think the focus of this book was more on the romances (multiple) than the fantasy side of things. Faebound had a lot more magical moments in my opinion.

I loved getting to explore more of the world and the forest as we were introduced to Alder.

I really loved Lettle's character; her character development in this one was incredible.

The cliffhanger at the end really shocked me. I did not see that coming, and I cannot wait to see how they close off the trilogy in the last book.
adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced