Oh man. I had hope for this book. I had problems with the earlier installments of this series, but with the way Hollow City ended, I was hopeful that Library of Souls would just take off from there and ramp everything up. Unfortunately, it took about 200 pages before I really started getting to this book. And even after that, I still wasn't so engrossed with the story that I couldn't put it down.
The pacing of this story is my biggest issue. I could honestly say that about all three books, but this one especially. Not only did it take almost 200 pages to get interesting, the climax of the book happens almost 70 pages before the book actually ends. Not much happens in those last seventy pages either, aside from the breakup of a relationship that never worked for me in the first place, and was undone about 30 pages later.

One other thing that really had me rolling my eyes was the introduction of Sharon. So, the author is expecting his audience to believe that:
1. A boat that they were going to steal in an attempt to run away is owned by someone with knowledge of peculiardom.
And
2. That someone has experience taking people to and from various loops and just happens to know exactly where their friends have been taken.
...can you say 'plot contrivance'? Now, he ended up being a decent character, but a lot of coincidences had to happen for them to cross paths. And if they had never met? The entire second half of this book hinges on a completely chance encounter. It would've made more sense to me if they had been told of him before or even met him before and sought him out to help them find their friends.

I just want to talk about the world building for a moment. The author has done a pretty good job building this world, which is good, considering it's our world, for the most part. But I thought it was amusing that Devil's Acre was made out to be this disgusting cesspool of the world's most evil beings ever and then they get there and...it didn't seem that bad. The build up for this wicked, horrible place just didn't pay off with the reality of it.

And maybe that is my problem with this series as a whole.

I know that I am in the minority of readers when I say that I don't love this series. This should've been a home run for me. People with magical/paranormal abilities? Check. Secret school for children with magical/paranormal abilities? Check. Fish out of water main character who discovers that he himself has abilities? Check. Time travel element? Check. It checks off so many boxes for me. But I just didn't fall in love with it. I liked it well enough. Parts of it were very interesting and engaging. But so many things bother me about this series as a whole.

The characters are boring. Aside from their unique abilities, there really isn't much to these characters. There is next to no development of any of them, aside from Jacob, who I do think shows tremendous growth throughout the series. I didn't connect or relate to any character at any point in these novels.

The 'romance' just never worked for me, on any level. It was underdeveloped, uninteresting, and wholly unnecessary.
I didn't feel any chemistry between them at all, no matter how much I was being told that they were in love. Not to mention the fact that up until a few weeks before that, she'd been carrying a torch for his GRANDFATHER...just let that sink in a moment.

And last but not least, the pictures. Now, I appreciated the pictures in the first book. Not only was it an interesting format and a different way to tell a story, it was also done in a way that contributed to the world-building. Unfortunately, it felt like the pictures in the second and third books just didn't have as much of an impact in regards to the story. It almost got to a point where it was gimmicky. There were points where I was listening to this on audiobook while I was doing chores or cooking dinner, and I could pinpoint every point where I knew if I looked in the book I would see a picture. Near the end it had me rolling my eyes. Now, many of these pictures were still very interesting, but their incorporation into the story was awkward at best, and forced if I'm being brutally honest.

One last thing I want to talk about is the audiobook. Now, I don't let this factor into my rating of a book, but man...this one was rough. The narrator was just boring. I think he was trying to sound like a 16 year old, but the voice was just nasally and strange. His attempts at a female voice were not good at all, and there were major inconsistencies with the accents. Sometimes Emma would sound Irish and sometimes she sounded English, and not even always the same English accent. The main baddie, Caul, sounded like some over-the-top cackling villain from some 80s cartoon on Saturday morning. And his reading pace was sooooo slow...it definitely made the already-slow pace even more so.

In the end, while this series didn't live up to the hype for me, I can see it's merits and the potential it had. I would give the series as a whole a 3-star rating.