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I gave this three stars because it's definitely better than the first two in this series. Not sure if that's perhaps over-generous, but I read the whole thing and didn't hate it so...
The biggest criticisms of this series are the overly poetic but-not-in-a-good-way writing style, and the lack of depth to the characters. By Ignite Me, Mafi has significantly improved the writing style - it's still a bit flowery, but at least it tends to make sense most of the time. She's ditched the strike throughs I think altogether (which makes sense as Juliette is no longer writing in her notebook) and that's a relief.
On the downside, an awful lot of this book is scrambling to make up for the failings of the first two. Juliette finally has her character redemption arc and becomes a lot less of a whiny nightmare. She still isn't a particularly good, interesting, or unique character, but I no longer want to slap her every 5 lines so I call that an improvement. Her powers become if anything more contradictory, more unbelievable, and less well explained (she develops her "strength" into a form of telekinesis basically overnight), and I find her development of control over it difficult to believe. It happened much too quickly and with very little effort from her. There's also a tiresome amount of characters talking to each other (mainly Juliette and Kenji) to explain a) Juliette's ridiculous instalove relationship with Adam in Books 1-2, b) do a little more world building, c) establish what will happen after the conclusion of the books (since this is not included in the series itself), d) frantically backpedal on Warner so the reader can invest in his and Juliette's relationship.
Basically, this book ended up mostly patching the massive holes in the others, desperately tried to redeem the characters so you'd feel even a little invested in them, tried and failed to world build, gave Juliette the world's fastest redemption arc while simultaneously god moding her, and then squashed the actual action into a few rushed chapters right at the very end of the book.
Okay, three stars is definitely too generous. Let's call it a 2.5, Mafi definitely deserves praise for the improvement to her writing style and I think that her next books will benefit from what she learned with this series.
The biggest criticisms of this series are the overly poetic but-not-in-a-good-way writing style, and the lack of depth to the characters. By Ignite Me, Mafi has significantly improved the writing style - it's still a bit flowery, but at least it tends to make sense most of the time. She's ditched the strike throughs I think altogether (which makes sense as Juliette is no longer writing in her notebook) and that's a relief.
On the downside, an awful lot of this book is scrambling to make up for the failings of the first two. Juliette finally has her character redemption arc and becomes a lot less of a whiny nightmare. She still isn't a particularly good, interesting, or unique character, but I no longer want to slap her every 5 lines so I call that an improvement. Her powers become if anything more contradictory, more unbelievable, and less well explained (she develops her "strength" into a form of telekinesis basically overnight), and I find her development of control over it difficult to believe. It happened much too quickly and with very little effort from her. There's also a tiresome amount of characters talking to each other (mainly Juliette and Kenji) to explain a) Juliette's ridiculous instalove relationship with Adam in Books 1-2, b) do a little more world building, c) establish what will happen after the conclusion of the books (since this is not included in the series itself), d) frantically backpedal on Warner so the reader can invest in his and Juliette's relationship.
Basically, this book ended up mostly patching the massive holes in the others, desperately tried to redeem the characters so you'd feel even a little invested in them, tried and failed to world build, gave Juliette the world's fastest redemption arc while simultaneously god moding her, and then squashed the actual action into a few rushed chapters right at the very end of the book.
Okay, three stars is definitely too generous. Let's call it a 2.5, Mafi definitely deserves praise for the improvement to her writing style and I think that her next books will benefit from what she learned with this series.