Reviews - House of Pounding Hearts

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

1.04k reviews for:

House of Pounding Hearts

Olivia Wildenstein

4.02 AVERAGE

arstirn_2000's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad 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

marginsandmeanings's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Uh oh! Someone got their hands on a thesaurus…

Everything I loved in House of Beating Wings is still here: the crow/bird shifter themes, the underdog arc, the “is he just a bird or a hot man??” tension, the character dynamics I genuinely care about… However.

Big words that don’t pop up in normal conversation (or even most books) kept yanking me out of the story. It’s like the author didn’t trust the strength of the plot and tried to elevate it with a poetic vocab flex. Here’s the thing: the story doesn’t need that. It’s fun, layered, and compelling on its own.

Still a good time. Still reading the next one. But here’s hoping we tone down the word salad next round.

ra_nya's review against another edition

2.0

fallon is, simply put, a moronic ignorant brat. she has no desire to learn, doesn’t understand social cues and has the common sense of a lobster. inside fallon’s pretty little head are only two roaches playing dominoes and they’re both losing.
my only thought throughout both of these books was that i truly hoped she would’ve had a brain altering sickness where she was either reduced to a vegetative state where i wouldn’t have to read her lame-brained words and actions OR where her personality changed entirely to the point it was a whole new character.

either way, it’s actually impressive how despite this pea-brained imbecile of a main character, the plot was entertaining enough to make me read the second book. definitely not strong enough to make me read the third one though. this thing lost its point after the first book, she freed the crows, that was her entire purpose, now what? also the things that were obviously copied from acotar were honestly hilarious to look at.
i could say that i liked lore, cause i know i would’ve, if only they had given him at least a bit of depth. his only personality trait was being obsessed with fallon for absolutely no reason, considering she treated him like absolute shit from the moment they met. i liked phoebus, but they also reduced him to his sexuality and that’s it, “ah yes look at the hot gay man who only thinks about fucking”. the female characters were just…there, there was no emotional connection to them whatsoever.
disappointing, annoying. i truly hope i never have to hear about fallon ever again. the good thing is that i know no other main character will ever bother me as much cause this girl just hit rock bottom and absolutely obliterated that bottom, she went straight to the earth’s core and was incinerated. not even ashes were left. thankfully.

rileyybrownn's review against another edition

3.0

Fallon is still very annoying but started to redeem herself towards the end. All this girlie wanted was to not be lied to and instead of demanding answers she took things upon herself and made stupid decisions. Decisions that literally made me want to rip my hair out. Also, Lore could have been a bit more forthcoming….it was cruel of him to let her believe things that weren’t true only for him to be like “well you didn’t ask” like fuck out of here