I am not okay. This series has left me so messed up I'm not even sure how I'm going to figure out my feelings about it in a coherent manner.

***Some spoilers for This Savage Song may be contained in this review.***

I loved everything about this story. I re-read This Savage Song yesterday in preparation for this book and I felt like the transition from the first to second book was very well done. There are some different characters and elements introduced in this book, but it all felt like it was felt the same world. There was a level of cohesion that I really appreciated.

Kate and August are still great characters, and I love that this book has both of them going through internal struggles that end up being quite similar, despite the fact that they spend about a third of the book apart. I love their friendship and that their relationship is based off an understanding each has of the other that they don't have in any of their other relationships.

I really liked the addition of Soro, and wish we could've had a little more of their story. I would love to see a novella from their perspective. Also, I love that Victoria Schwab wrote about a non-binary character. It doesn't feel like I see that very often in popular literature, so that was really interesting.

The villains were scary AF. Sloan creeped me out all through the first novel, but with his growing obsession with

Kate

in this book, his creepiness reached a whole other level of disturbing. And Alice was just terrifying. I thought they were both very well-written, and I believed their respective motivations in regard to their actions. They were both revolting, awful creatures, but it didn't feel one-dimensional.

The writing is, as always, stunning. I love the way Victoria Schwab creates such a rich and interesting world for her rich and interesting characters. Her story ideas are so unique and she executes them to perfection in this series.

I also really appreciated the fact that this was a duology. I think we really need more duologies. The writing tends to be tighter and less filler, when you compare them to trilogies or longer series.

If I had to find something to critique, and I will, since no book is actually *perfect*, I would say that there were a few character threads that were pretty much dropped. All of the people Kate knew in Prosperity, as well as Mony, who she meets back in Verity, are introduced and then we don't hear from them again. Now I understand it for the most part concerning the friends back in Prosperity, since she left and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of communication with other territories, but Mony was introduced as a part of the FTF. She and Kate spend one day together training and that is all we ever hear from her, unless I missed a reference to her later on.

One more thing I wanted to touch on was the end of this book.

I thought it was perfect. So often, there are these epic fantasy stories with 27 main characters and every one of them makes their way through the series relatively unscathed. Every once in awhile a minor side character is killed, but it's not someone you care about anyway. Now, I'm not saying I want the characters I love to die, but in a story that is all about a war between humans and monsters...it's completely realistic that at least one of our main characters will meet their end. Now, that's not to say I wasn't shocked and heartbroken when not only one but TWO characters died in the last 20 pages, but honestly, that is realistic (yes, I know I'm using the word 'realistic' to talk about a fantasy book...so be it.). And really, I like the fact that the stakes were high. This wasn't manufactured drama. But I still can't believe Schwab did that and I'm super sad. But that's okay. It means she did her job at creating kick-ass characters you want to root for.

I haven't read any of Schwab's adult books, but I love her YA novels. I can't wait to see what she is going to come out with next.