A review by pagesfullofstars
Krąg ognia by Michelle Zink

2.0

More reviews also on my blog Pages Full of Stars.

My rating: 2/6

Keep in mind that this review contains some spoilers!

Circle of Fire is the last book in the Prophecy of the Sisters series and sadly also my least favourite. The first book is one of my favourite 2015 reads so far but the second book disappointed me, so I didn’t know what to expect of it but it left me sad and disheartened.

I felt that the main character, Lia, changed a lot and as I was reading she gradually became less and less likable. Not only her attitude towards her friends but her reaction to Alice’s news were ridiculous.
Seeing how she treated James and how quickly she jumped into Dimitri’s arms, her reaction upon hearing about Alice and James’s engagement made me really mad.
James himself, who I saw as a smart and kind man, was belittled to the character of a lovesick fool. I also thought that all the secondary characters didn’t play any important role and were more of a background. Lia’s relationship with Dimitri became irritating, especially when we had important events suddenly stopped by their romance scenes. It was so out of the blue that it disturbed the pace of the story.

And what disappointed me probably the most was the ending. Some of it was predictable but after what we were given I can’t accept what happened with Alice. Once again, I felt that the book could gain a lot by having both Lia’s and Alice’s POVs, because the way it played out we were left with a lot of plot holes.

Now, with the bigger spoilers about the ending.
I grew to understand and like Alice after I read the second novella that accompanies the main books and learned the things that were also mentioned in this book and that’s why it was so hard for me to cope with the ending. The way I saw it, so many people from the beginning deemed her as the "bad" one without giving her a chance and kept pushing her away that in the end she had no other option than to side with the Souls. They were the only ones who showed any interest in her, because even their parents and little brother pushed Alice away in favour of Lia. As little as we got of Alice in Circle of Fire, I could see her internal conflict but also resignation to the thought that she won’t ever be as "good" as her twin sister. We learned the reason behind her behaviour yet she never head a chance for redemption. I know that not all of Alice’s actions could have been justified but it hit me that in the end her death didn’t really influence Lia, as if she didn’t really care.


The only thing that I liked about this book was the search for the stone and the fact that the pacing of the plot improved. But other than that, I’m disappointed that the series which had a lot of potential and was very promising ended that way.