A review by shelbyfayy
The Unbound Witch by Miranda Lyn

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Rating: 3 stars

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Tropes:

🌙Dual POV

🌙Second chance

🌙Found family

🌙Witches/Shifters

🌙Betrayal

There was a lot of ground to cover in this sequel, and boy did it attempt to get it all in there, even to a fault. Raven, Grey, and Kirsi are stranded in the human lands and must rely on a new ragtag team of shifters and witch to get home and stop the coven leaders before they completely wreck the world in their quest for more power. Plots are unveiled, even more than were hinted at in the first book, betrayals revealed, bloodlines and relationships questioned. 

We got a new POV in this book, Kirsi’s, and I’m not sure I liked the change. I don’t normally mind dual or even multiple POVs, but each character has to have a distinct voice, and I’m not sure these characters did. I would find myself completely forgetting whose POV I was in and having to scroll back to the chapter heading to find out. That should never be a problem in a book like this. This was my biggest issue with the book by far. There also was just a severe imbalance in these POVs, leading to Raven feeling more like a side character in her own book. 

The characters were all still enjoyable, particularly the new additions of Tor and Atty, but our main trio continued to feel a little flat to me for a reason I can’t entirely name. It was only made more apparent as I said before by the dual POVs. The two female MCs read exactly like the same character because they lack any defining personality characteristics in their narration. It made all the emotional moments just less so for me. The found family element almost made up for this, it was so well done—just not quite enough.

I did enjoy the plot, some of the twists I saw coming and some I really didn’t. I liked the intrigue and build-up from the first book to find out just why Raven is unmarked, why the coven leaders want the Grimoires and why separating the Omnia book even happened, etc. It was really well thought out and easy to follow as the characters learned more and more. However, the pacing in a lot of these moments felt off. Some scenes were just so cutthroat action-packed, or extremely high tension, and then we’d just randomly have a spicy moment in the same scene? It was all just a bit odd. 

Overall, I did enjoy this book, just not as much as the first one. The problems book 1 had seemed to be exacerbated here, though what book 1 did well was likewise done even better here as well. I’ve heard really good things about the final novella, so I’ll be checking that out.