I am PEEVED. this was such a hit to the goodwill stephanie garber had been building as an author. these two books of the spinoff series felt even younger than the original series but at LEAST the first one held a little more intrigue, had more stakes, and had interesting revelations. this one was such a slog to get through. the main mission of the story for our main character evangeline was working with jax to get these 4 stones and open the arch and break the curse on apollo. sounds like there would be some fun adventure in that, right? NO! OFC NOT! all the stones were basically within a 5 mile radius of each other so that was boring as hell. on top of that, the main reason evangeline wanted to even work with jax despite how much damage he's done to her life is bc she wanted to save apollo... who only married her under a curse and who we as the audience have no reason to care for really like i have no stake in him or his relationship with evangeline. DOUBLY SO for evangeline and jax, jesus christ. he has been duping her ass for 2 books straight like I'm not rooting for them???? this entire book was a painful cycle of evangline trusting him, him tricking her, her getting upset, him being seen w a girl/her being seen w a guy and one of them being slightly jealous w/o admitting feelings, repeat. the worst part was the writing, it was pretty similar in the first one but this book didn't have a solid plot to hide behind so i had to listen to the most egregiously cringy shit good god. "she could cure him with love!!"" at the climax of the story like what if i removed your teeth and threw them in a coffee grinder so i never have to hear that shit again. She had agengu I GUESS but she used that agency to make the dumbest possible choice each time and sort of fail upwards. I HATE that the last 20 min actually did something compelling bc I was planning on not reading to next book in fear of it being 300 pages of the words googoo gaga