A review by librovermo
The Book That Held Her Heart by Mark Lawrence

4.5

I’m not going to include spoilers in this review, which means it’s not going to be super detailed because it’s the third book in a trilogy which means there’s a whole lot I can’t mention without ruining things.

As with the first two books, every character’s story is so perfectly woven into and throughout time. If a character is there, there’s a thoughtful and deliberate reason behind it that is probably central to a major plot point. It’s honestly incredible that Mark Lawrence was able to make this entire trilogy make sense even though by all rights the story should be extremely confusing. How does he write this stuff in a way that allows for perfect understanding? 

My favorite of the books is definitely the second, but I think this was a solid followup. The release and message of the book and really, the entire trilogy, is extremely timely. There’s discussion of fascism and book burning that broke my heart and had me crying. The war between Jaspeth and Irad feels more applicable to real now life than ever before and it’s a scary thing to think about.

The Book That Held Her Heart is a great ending to a fantastic trilogy. It’s not very often that I’m fully pleased with the final book in a series because an epilogue ruins it, or something is left unanswered and it feels like it was left that way just in case the author ever wants to add another book. Not this one. There are no loose ends and I don’t feel at all as if I’ve been left wanting.

Read this trilogy. Seriously. If you’ve been sleeping on the first two, waiting for the third to release, it’s out now, okay? So no excuses!

Thank you to Berkley/Ace, from whom I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley.