After reading the first book in the series, I was chomping at the bit to read this one. How could I walk away from that ending without wanting to marathon it all? And while I wouldn't say I was disappointed by it, I did like it less than the first.

I'm not a huge fan of romance a lot of the time, but The Inheritance Games had what I thought was a really good balance of mystery plot vs. romance plot. There were a couple moments where I wrinkled my nose at some heavy-handed romance, but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the main plot. With this book, I feel like that balance was thrown out of whack. The first 2/3 felt like it was just the love triangle with some filler thrown in, and most of the heavy plot points were all crammed into the last 1/3, which made it feel like an afterthought. If the mystery plot points were more evenly distributed, I think I would have been more satisfied with it overall.

That isn't to say I didn't enjoy the romance. Compared to the first book, the romantic scenes felt a lot more natural, which was a big plus for me. This could be because we're more familiar with the characters, but I think the writing itself improved when it came to how Avery thought of the boys.

One more wish I would have had for this book would have been for Xander to be more involved. Based on the ending of the first book, it really seemed like he would be a main focus. I was excited to learn more about him, being that he's my favorite Hawthorne, but that didn't really pan out. In fact, a lot of the time, the other characters were actively leaving him out of the mystery. Kinda the opposite of what I expected/hoped for.

Despite the shortcomings I felt this book had, I'll continue the series with The Final Gambit when it comes out in 2022. I'll just be crossing my fingers that we'll have more of the fun puzzles that have always been my favorite aspect of the series, less of the boy troubles.