1) Son of the Dawn ★★★
2) Cast Long Shadows ★★
3) Every Exquisite Thing ★★★★★
4) Learn About Loss ★★
5) A Deeper Love ★★★★
6) The Wicked Ones ★★★★
7) The Land I Lost ★★★★★
8) Through Blood, Through Fire ★★★★
9) The Lost World ★★★★
10) Forever Fallen ★★★★½

content warnings: bullying, miscarriage
representation: british-chinese main character, disabled side character


“It lightens my heart to see you with it. We could all do with lighter hearts tonight.”


To be honest, The Last Hours and its characters have never really gotten me all that fired up. I like it in theory, but I always find it hard to keep the characters straight and a lot of the times I'm just really bored by it. That's probably a pretty big reason why I didn't like this as much as a lot of other people did.

This novella focuses on Matthew Fairchild grappling with a secret and meeting Brother Zachariah at the Shadow Market. I mostly just didn't care about this one. There was a super unnecessary and unresolved plot point in which Alastair Carstairs tells Matthew something that may or may not be true (it's probably not), and that entire aspect of it really bored me.

Even the Jem stuff bored me this time, which is never a good thing because I normally love seeing him no matter what. The saving grace of this entire novella was the friendship between James and Matthew, and I am really excited to see them together in The Last Hours. Other than that, this one just really didn't float my boat.

(side note: there's no way matthew's straight, right?? he loves oscar wilde wayyyy too much)