This is a 3 star book for Sarah Rees Brennan, if that makes sense. It's not that the book wasn't good or enjoyable or clever or that the characters have gotten any less brilliant or witty since the first book. But it felt very much like, well, like the second book in a trilogy that exists to tie together books 1 and 3. Things happened because they needed to happen to advance the story, but sometimes they felt like they took too long or didn't hang together as flawlessly as I expect.
The romance, for example, had so many false starts and repeats of the same mistake that I wasn't as excited as I wanted to be when it finally worked out.
That's the problem when you consistently write really excellent books, writing a good book leaves me disappointed.
Still planning to read the third, though. I need to know how it ends!