What a disappointment. I was really looking forward to this sequel, as I adored the first book, but this did nothing for me, and I ended up hate reading it towards the end. I've realised that the thing I really liked about the first book was the trans experience, and the rest of the plot was just background for me. As there's basically no trans stuff in this one, it was left to the plot, which was pretty weak in my opinion.

At 50% in, there was no plot apart from Leonie fucking off to Europe, which ended up being pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things to take up so much of the book. 

Ciara's character was all over the place. She was evil and didn't care about anyone or anything (e.g. calling Theo a 'cunt'), but also cared a lot about everything? All she did was moan about how little she could remember of her life, and when it was 'revealed' it wasn't even that interesting. I had zero grasp of her character, and her chapters were pretty blah - she wasn't evil enough to be interesting, or wanting redemption enough to make me want to route for her. And her 'friends' accepted her back in WAY too easily, that was wild. Did they also forget all the horrible things we've been told she did?

   

Also, the 'women good, men bad' theme started to feel really forced and unnatural in this book. I thought it was a good commentary in the first, but in here there was hardly any nuance to it, it was very surface level. It started to irk me when EVERYTHING a woman ever did wrong was blamed on the actions of men. There needs to be some responsibility taken, and evil women can exist on their own too. Also, there was not one mundane woman in this book to compare their reactions to magic against those of men, which I think would have added much needed nuance to the story. 

And what a weird, confusing ending. Mile was Lucifer the whole time, but now his dad can't remember him at all??? What the actual fuck? And I just can't see Theo going rogue, it made no character sense at all. She'd been so principled throughout, then just suddenly switched?

This has gone from being one of the series I was most excited to finish, to one I am now dreading continuing. Maybe I'll read the third book when it comes out, and if I do I hope it is a lot better than this one.