This review contains spoilers.

Wayfarer was a long, arduous read that did not live up to the potential established in Passenger. Like most readers, I had massive problems with the writing style and pacing of this sequel. Bracken has the unfortunate habit of picking up random tangents and running with them for several pages at a time. It was infuriating, to say the least. We would be forced to dilly-dally around the main plotline for entire chapters as the characters wasted time doing goodness knows what for goodness know what reason. The book as a whole could easily have been at least 150 shorter if these scenes and repetitive passages in Nicholas’s chapters had been cut down.

The characters were another sore spot. Henry was the only character that I genuinely enjoyed. Although looking back, I do have to say that I admire Sophia’s ‘take no shit’ attitude and for being the most rational character in the entire book by far. Unfortunately, the main characters were nothing like I remembered them to be from the first book, especially Nicholas. He did nothing but whinge and whine for the entire book. He used his grief to excuse his poor choices and to a certain extent, I can understand that but damn, he was an idiot for the majority of the books and so self-pitying that it drove me bonkers. Etta was also off. She had literally no personality and I felt like she was oddly absent from the main storyline for the most part.

The romance was also poorly written. Etta and Nicholas had no chemistry. Their entire relationship in this book relied on the leftover feels of the one romantic scene in Passenger. No effort was made to develop or deepen their relationship and I was just not feeling it, even if I shipped it in the first book. I needed more. I did like that it had a lot of diverse elements without ramming its theme down our throats. Sophia’s romance was a little forced but it was worth the effort and I liked how seamlessly a gay couple was slipped into the story as well.

Wayfarer was very plot-focused but I struggled to keep track of everything that was happening. The entire Belladonna plotline left me clueless. I had no idea what was happening and even now, I do not understand what Shadows are meant to be. I don’t know if I fell asleep at that point or what, all I know is that they stole kids to become assassins or something like that? They were randomly just always there, attacking people, and somehow Nicholas could always injury or kill them, even when he was dying. It was too much for me. It felt unneeded, confusing and plot hole-ish. It also did not help that Nicholas was acting like a clueless rookie. He made stupid decision after stupid decision and drove me insane with frustration. I don’t understand who would trust an Ironwood at this point? It seems such a moronic move to make and why oh why would you make a freaking deal with a witch with such sloppy wording? Everyone know that you have to be hella specific when you make a binding contract with someone. You can always find a loophole and you never, ever promise to do a favour for them in return and not specify when or what that favour is! That is just being dumb. There is no other way to describe it.

Also, I desperately need to talk about the ending. Umm, what was that meant to be? I hated it. I was proud of Nicholas for making the decision he did. Screw everyone’s personal motives, he knew he had to put the collective good first and just restore the timeline… and then things went to hell. What was he thinking? I get going into the future to see/be with Etta. I get that and even expected that to happen… but the rest? I was so, so confused. He just decided to open all the passages again, consequences be damned? I cannot wrap up my head around that. It seems like such a stupid thing to do to me. Is that not the reason everything went to hell in the first place? Also, I really, really, really wanted her mum to be evil so that ‘twist’ ruined that for me.

Overall?

Wayfarer was too long, too boring and too poorly constructed for me to enjoy it. I did like some of the historical scenes - the history nerd in my fangirled over Nicholas II - and Henry but I did not enjoy the as a whole much at all. The writing style was dense. The pacing was slow. The characters were unlikable and their relationship lost all its shippy-ness. I was just disappointed by too many elements of this series finale to be satisfied.