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nymphread 's review for:
A Vow of Embers (The Eye of the Goddess Book 2)
by Sariah Wilson
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Oh man… where do I even begin?
The first book in this series wasn’t perfect, but I genuinely had fun with it. It ended on such a juicy cliffhanger: Lia discovering that the sailor she’d been seeing, Jason, was actually Prince Alexandros, the very man she was once betrothed to before fleeing her home. Naturally, I was hyped.
I was ready for all the tropes: yearning, unresolved tension, enemies to lovers angst, an engagement loaded with resentment and heat, and, of course, some progression in the overarching plot involving the Eye of the Goddess and the priestesses.
What I got instead was… 600 pages of absolutely nothing.
The book is just the FMC, Lia, oscillating between being desperately horny for the MMC, saying she hates him, getting jealous, being mad for no reason, and then horny again. Rinse and repeat. There’s a near hate-sex scene every other chapter. Everyone around her keeps telling her how much Xander loves her, but she either denies it, ignores it, or spirals into some self-pitying, contradictory monologue while still being jealous and touch-starved. Also, there’s body betrayal in every third chapter. No exaggeration.
Oh, and let’s not forget that he kisses another woman. For no reason. Because why not?
You want plot? There is none. The central story around the Eye of the Goddess is basically untouched until the last 80% of the story. It honestly felt like the author wanted to stall any real plot development to stretch the series out, but didn’t fill the space with meaningful character work either.
And that’s the real tragedy here: if you’re going to pause plot progression, you better give us compelling character dynamics! But nope, that wasn’t present here either.
Lia devolved into someone irrational, constantly angry, horny, jealous, and weirdly oblivious to everything going on around her (including her own sister’s painfully obvious romantic situation). Xander, once a character with some personality, got flattened into a cardboard alpha male whose main function was to put Lia on her back and declare vague feelings of lust for her without any other substance.
Even the steamy scenes fell flat because I was so annoyed by both of them at that point. There was no tension anymore, just exhausting repetition.
It’s so disappointing because the setup had so much potential: an arranged marriage between two characters with a tangled past and tons of emotional baggage? That’s interesting. That’s tension. That’s fertile ground for drama, angst and development! But all that was squandered here in favor of horny filler and character regression.
This book actively made me like the characters less and killed any interest I had in the ongoing story. I can’t believe I read almost 600 pages of this.
The first book in this series wasn’t perfect, but I genuinely had fun with it. It ended on such a juicy cliffhanger: Lia discovering that the sailor she’d been seeing, Jason, was actually Prince Alexandros, the very man she was once betrothed to before fleeing her home. Naturally, I was hyped.
I was ready for all the tropes: yearning, unresolved tension, enemies to lovers angst, an engagement loaded with resentment and heat, and, of course, some progression in the overarching plot involving the Eye of the Goddess and the priestesses.
What I got instead was… 600 pages of absolutely nothing.
The book is just the FMC, Lia, oscillating between being desperately horny for the MMC, saying she hates him, getting jealous, being mad for no reason, and then horny again. Rinse and repeat. There’s a near hate-sex scene every other chapter. Everyone around her keeps telling her how much Xander loves her, but she either denies it, ignores it, or spirals into some self-pitying, contradictory monologue while still being jealous and touch-starved. Also, there’s body betrayal in every third chapter. No exaggeration.
Oh, and let’s not forget that he kisses another woman. For no reason. Because why not?
You want plot? There is none. The central story around the Eye of the Goddess is basically untouched until the last 80% of the story. It honestly felt like the author wanted to stall any real plot development to stretch the series out, but didn’t fill the space with meaningful character work either.
And that’s the real tragedy here: if you’re going to pause plot progression, you better give us compelling character dynamics! But nope, that wasn’t present here either.
Lia devolved into someone irrational, constantly angry, horny, jealous, and weirdly oblivious to everything going on around her (including her own sister’s painfully obvious romantic situation). Xander, once a character with some personality, got flattened into a cardboard alpha male whose main function was to put Lia on her back and declare vague feelings of lust for her without any other substance.
Even the steamy scenes fell flat because I was so annoyed by both of them at that point. There was no tension anymore, just exhausting repetition.
It’s so disappointing because the setup had so much potential: an arranged marriage between two characters with a tangled past and tons of emotional baggage? That’s interesting. That’s tension. That’s fertile ground for drama, angst and development! But all that was squandered here in favor of horny filler and character regression.
This book actively made me like the characters less and killed any interest I had in the ongoing story. I can’t believe I read almost 600 pages of this.