A review by readsforlove
All The Hidden Paths by Foz Meadows

2.5

Part of what I loved about book 1 is how mature the MCs were, and how they talked about stuff. I hate miscommunication as a trope (barring a few examples) and I knew it was going to be in this book, so I was trying to give it a chance but ... LORD. These boys. There's so much they don't resolve, even at the end, and I get more frustrated the more I think about it. They both care so deeply for each other, and yes they're each hurt deeply and dealing with that in their own ways, but I really wish they had some sit down convos to work stuff out, especially before they got to the city. Instead, they just barely talk about any of it. (like, Cae triggering Val especially. They fight about it but don't ever talk about it to resolve it? Ugh.)

Not only was that driving me up a wall, but the whole mystery plot of things was annoying to me. I thought I had a good suspect, but who it ended up being was just ... weird and unbelievable in my opinion. I thought the whole thing could have been done much better. (And made different from book 1 cause it felt very similar.)

Also, this book was a lot spicier than the first one which was not my cup of tea, but I have a very low tolerance for spice, so take that with a grain of salt. (I also just ... did not get what the fuck was going on with Azrien and Naza. At all. Azrien really did not need a POV.)

Anyway, yeah, I don't regret having read this book, but it just was very underwhelming and miserable to get through and I wish it had been better.