4.02 AVERAGE

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious sad tense
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

My favourite in the series. The characters, a more established plot, omg.

4.5 stars

My opinions remain from the previous books that the writing feels too young and cringe, the characters all blur together, and I HATE Max. HOWEVERRRR, this book focused way more on the mystery and puzzles and less on the romance, which was perfect for me, and really redeemed this series as a whole. And let's talk about that ending! I never, and I mean NEVER, feel satisfied with series endings/wrap ups/epilogues, but this one felt so right and so perfect.
adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
adventurous challenging mysterious 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: No

This one wasn't as good as the other two and the villain was a round about way at getting it. I enjoyed knowing the characters in the first one and trying to figure out early on who was doing what. We got that slightly with Eve but we weren't introduced to the idea of the bad guy until very far into the book. I also don't get why Toby didn't beat Eve in the chess game and he had to come out with that he was alive anyways like that didn't make sense to me on why he would have done that. Also was not a fan that they built us up to these chess games and barely got any details on the games even though that was a plot point and the name of the book basically. Anyways it was a good book and would read again.
adventurous medium-paced
adventurous mysterious tense

5 ⭐️ for Avery and the Hawthorne brothers!

Once again, I was sucked into Tobias Hawthorne’s world of puzzles and riddles, and struggled majorly to put this book down. This whole entire series has me in a chokehold. I need to get my hands on book 4 ASAP.
adventurous challenging mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Eve is my enemy
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated