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mkkusek 's review for:
Heart on Fire
by Amanda Bouchet
It's bad when a book takes you almost two years to read. I admit, part of that problem lies with me; I haven't been as good of a reader in recent years. However, I can still devour a good book in a relatively short amount of time. Unfortunately, this one did not live up to its predecessors.
*Spoilers below*
Normally, I would be all about this type of book - a baby's on the way, and the female heroine is coming into her own power. Mysteries are being solved. But this one just didn't do it for me, and I think much of that had to do with the pacing.
The book starts off with a massive betrayal and then chapters upon chapters of revealing the true identities of certain characters. It just dragged on for too long. Some good action started happening in the middle, though between the end of the previous book and this one, don't ask me how Talia remains pregnant. She gets so thrown around and beat up, any normal woman would have miscarried (though of course, Talia's not normal). Still, that's a detail that I was never quite able to suspend my disbelief for.
Towards the end, the Tartarus arc was actually really interesting. I had NOT expected her to end up there, and because it was a completely new circumstance, I really enjoyed discovering what was happening with Talia. Now, my issue is that Talia's taken almost three books to try to master her power (it's getting old how she doesn't understand it, but I can bear with it), and then some shift in her mind happened, and I'm not quite sure how she suddenly tapped into it. There was a slight transition missing between her not being able to use her powers on command and her suddenly being able to.
Part of this, I feel, stemmed from how rushed the ending seemed. This whole book was a downpour of Talia's inner thoughts (and not the fun romance tension types, since that was resolved back in book 1), and the beginning arcs were so stretched out that it was a shock that the ending just suddenly...happened. The issues with her mother were literally wrapped up in 10-15 pages. Kind of anti-climactic after three books of buildup - and of her mother totally tearing into her and trying to kill her for literally ALL of this book - until those last 15 pages, when Talia's words can suddenly pierce her heart. I didn't buy it. Her mother took hostages and did nothing with them. There was no tension there. It was overall just a lackluster ending, though a happy one at least.
Sad to say I was disappointed by the end of this series, since I loved the first two so much, but I've noticed that a lot of "romance trilogies" are that way because romances are traditionally designed to carry over only one book, and if you want to continue that tension across them all, you've got to be crafty with it. This book was all action with some expected sex, so it just wasn't as gripping as the last two.
*Spoilers below*
Normally, I would be all about this type of book - a baby's on the way, and the female heroine is coming into her own power. Mysteries are being solved. But this one just didn't do it for me, and I think much of that had to do with the pacing.
The book starts off with a massive betrayal and then chapters upon chapters of revealing the true identities of certain characters. It just dragged on for too long. Some good action started happening in the middle, though between the end of the previous book and this one, don't ask me how Talia remains pregnant. She gets so thrown around and beat up, any normal woman would have miscarried (though of course, Talia's not normal). Still, that's a detail that I was never quite able to suspend my disbelief for.
Towards the end, the Tartarus arc was actually really interesting. I had NOT expected her to end up there, and because it was a completely new circumstance, I really enjoyed discovering what was happening with Talia. Now, my issue is that Talia's taken almost three books to try to master her power (it's getting old how she doesn't understand it, but I can bear with it), and then some shift in her mind happened, and I'm not quite sure how she suddenly tapped into it. There was a slight transition missing between her not being able to use her powers on command and her suddenly being able to.
Part of this, I feel, stemmed from how rushed the ending seemed. This whole book was a downpour of Talia's inner thoughts (and not the fun romance tension types, since that was resolved back in book 1), and the beginning arcs were so stretched out that it was a shock that the ending just suddenly...happened. The issues with her mother were literally wrapped up in 10-15 pages. Kind of anti-climactic after three books of buildup - and of her mother totally tearing into her and trying to kill her for literally ALL of this book - until those last 15 pages, when Talia's words can suddenly pierce her heart. I didn't buy it. Her mother took hostages and did nothing with them. There was no tension there. It was overall just a lackluster ending, though a happy one at least.
Sad to say I was disappointed by the end of this series, since I loved the first two so much, but I've noticed that a lot of "romance trilogies" are that way because romances are traditionally designed to carry over only one book, and if you want to continue that tension across them all, you've got to be crafty with it. This book was all action with some expected sex, so it just wasn't as gripping as the last two.