I get it, Warner has a more complicated backstory than we knew in book one…but are we supposed to forget he’s also quite literally someone willing to torture toddlers to see how powerful his recently kidnapped female prisoner is?

Are we supposed to conveniently forget that part from book one because in this book he was nice to a stray dog? I don’t want a kid and I like dogs, but he put Juliette and a toddler in a room with retractable spikes just to see if she would kill the toddler trying to save him. That’s not a poor little misunderstood boy, that’s the mastermind behind Saw.

Adam was insufferable
Juliette was annoying and had absolutely no character development, despite claiming she did occasionally
Kenji was ‘funny’ in the way that ten year old boys are funny…which can be very funny at times but also incredibly lame and doesn’t really salvage this book.

Initially I thought I was going to rate this higher than book 1 (3 stars) because everyone says Warner makes it better. Then I thought it would at least be equal to book one, because of backstories. And then I realised it is in fact worse because the characters are more annoying, the world building is non-existent, and Juliette makes me want to scream.