This was the most unnecessary, unimaginative, and underwhelming sequel I have ever read.

The first book wraps up nicely with a little found family. Justice was served, debts repaid, and even though trauma isn't simply cured with a magic spell, Vanja is beginning to love, trust, and grow. It is implied that her future may be whimsical and mischievous, but Vanja is well on her way to healthy self-discovery.

Book two immediately breaks up the found family, and has Vanja put all of her self-worth into her biological family's approval. And all 12 of her siblings are boring as drywall, falling into that tired trope of being characterized as "A name, a hair color, and a gender. The end." Vanja unlearns all of the trust she had for Emeric, and assumes the worst of him at every turn. And gone is intelligent, romantic Emeric; he's a YA trope now, only existing to be sexualized or to tell Vanja that she's always right, even when she gets herself into trouble. Gone is critical thinking, our heroes playing right to the villain's hand the whole way through. Vanja falls back into her old thieving habits, rationalizing still that she's doing it for a good reason, even though she spent THE ENTIRE FIRST BOOK cursed for doing exactly that! Gone is the political intrigue, replaced with financial crimes... woo... so exciting. There's an off-in-the-margins cult that might have been intriguing, but it's never given as much scrutiny as it deserves. And what could have been an intriguing antagonist that personified how trauma or shame, and the lies we tell ourselves, can take on a nightmarish life of its own when we reinforce our fears with negative self-talk, is WASTED and never properly explored!!! Instead, we get a watered down Darth Vader. "Vanja, I am your Mother." Booo! Boo hiss boo! We could have had Dopple-Vanja! And instead we got Darth Mommy-Marthe's ghost?! Boooooo!!!

The one... very tiny... almost microscopic thing that this book did right, was take the sensationalism out of YA Romantasy, and just delivered a nice, healthy, openly-communicated love story. The heroes took their time discovering sex, having discussions about contraception or pleasure or long-term relationship goals... But as much as it was healthy, and nice, and a smart move for a YA book... It was stiiiill... boring? Many times I felt like I had opened up a Health Class workbook, and was reading a hypothetical scenario that I was then meant to discuss with the class. O_o It was a weird vibe. Like, if you wanted to have The Talk with your teen, but didn't want to embarrass them, so you gave them this book to read, with the instructions, "Come talk to me after if you have questions."

A boring plot. Wasted characters. A weird vibe. And a complete gutting of the first book. If I could give Painted Devils fewer than 1 star, I would.