09/18/2021 ☆☆☆
05/25/2024 ★★★★

I think I actually enjoyed this one more the second time. I will admit, I was more than a little frustrated with Lou and Reid. The miscommunication trope is my most disliked trope of all the tropes. I get so mad and so frustrated that I usually stop enjoying the book. Which is why this is 4 stars instead of 5. 

The story really picks up in this one. It's absolutely stocked full of planning and scheming and the politics between the church and the witches, and I was all the way here for it. I just had to ignore the drama between Lou and Reid (and focus on the blooming love between Beau and Coco) 

I loved watching Reid grow in this one and accept his new self, and I hated watching Lou's decent. Although, I'm glad it didn't last the entire book. The author did a pretty good job at keeping us invested and on the edge of our seats without taking that plot line further than it needed to go. I love Lou. She's badass, hard-core, and so much fun, I didn't want to have to hate her. 

I think this book was really well done. I'm invested in all of the characters. I'm invested in the storyline. It gives me all of the feels, all of the hope, and so many smiles. 

09/16/2021 ☆☆☆☆☆
05/24/2024 ★★★★★

I love this book. Maybe not as much as the last time I read it, as there were certain things that I remembered differently than what actually happened, but I still love this book. 

Lou is such a fun, headstrong, badass character, and I have so much fun reading her. I appreciate that the author didn't try too hard to make her super quirky or “not one of THOSE girls, girls”, you know? I'm kind of tired of the chosen one crap that's constant lately. I mean, Lou is the chosen one, but not in a good way. 

Reid is also swoony. I could swoon over him all day. I love how niave he is to the world, and I think it adds so much to their relationship that she gets to show him so much of the world, and her world that he would never experience otherwise. 

Now, I do have to say that I could have used a bit more chemistry. While I do really like the two of them together, I didn't totally FEEL it. I smiled a lot in the bits and pieces of them building their relationship, but my heart never really melted, you know? 

I also have to say that while the plot behind this book is amazing, I could have used more of it throughout. This first half of the book really builds the characters and their history, which was great, because I never felt lost or blindsided by any of the “twists'' that came up, but I also found that it lacked any real plot or direction. It was kind of just all of our characters living day to day lives, and while I love the characters, the lack of any purpose really created a lull for me near the middle of the book. 

Honestly, the story is so fun. I love all the characters. They're all really well developed, and I'm loving the development of all their relationships and storylines coming through. 

Just as good the second time around ♡

My daughter and I really like these books. 

The relationship between all of the kids is great. The way they banter and argue and fight, its so reminiscent of my relationship with my siblings. I appreciate that this series seems to be a step up from the prior, and my daughter does too. 

There's so much suspense in this one that we had a hard time putting it down at bedtime and finished it in two days. We'll be jumping into the next one as soon as possible. 

This world is always so much fun. 

My daughter and I have returned to the Spiderwick Chronicles, and we're happy to be here. 

K doesn't really like Nick, but she loves Laurie, so it balances out. She loved Taloa and the way she sing songs everything she says, I however, really struggled to read those parts out loud, haha. 

I like that these books are a little bit longer than the original Spiderwick books, so they feel like they have a bit more story to them. 

We read through this one pretty quick, and we like it. It's a fun series, I love the history behind the giants, and I'm excited to learn more. K wants more mermaids. 

This is the epitome of saving the best for last. This was by far the best book in the series. There was action, political intrigue, and espionage. All of it, everything I love that I wish had been more prominent in the other books. 

We moved away from all of the drama between Hades and Persephone and into the real nit and gritty between all the gods and the demi gods trying to take them down. I was on the edge of my seat for so much of this book, and I couldn't get enough. 

I don't know if it was worth all of the nonsense I went through with the rest of the series to get here, but I'm glad I got here. I really enjoyed this one. It's still only 3 stars, but considering the last couple of this series almost hit one star, I think that's a pretty big improvement. 

I don't know what it says about the main characters in the series when I preferred the side story to them. Dionysus and Ariadne stole the show. And of course, my Hermes ♡. Still low-key hate Apollo even if he did get a redemption arc. And I ended this series hating Persephone a little less, so that's nice, even if Hades is still a “meh” from me. 

I appreciate that this book spent quite a bit of time following Dionysus and Ariadne. It was fresh and new, and not a regurgitation of a book that's already been written, and not entirely all of Hades and Persephone bologna. I enjoyed their story. I really like Ariande. 

Other than that, everything else stayed the same. Persephone annoys the hell out of me. Hades is brooding and grumpy in the worst way. And there's still entirely too much smut and too little plot. 

I'm hopeful going into the last book that as all the storyline lines come together, I might enjoy my experience.  

11/14/2021 ☆☆
05/17/2024 ★★

I really dont have much to say. This book is just more of the same Persephone nonsense. More if this book is sex than not. Honestly, it got annoying. It was just too much, I skipped most of it. There was some plot in this book, but it was absolutely flooded with smut that by the time I got to anything with any real substance, I just didn't care anymore. 

I appreciate that we got to see more of the gods in this one, I guess. I hate that everything that happened with Apollo just got swept under the rug and dismissed because he was “heartbroken and acting out”. Way to stand by your word Persephone. I guess that now her friend's powers were returned, it doesn't matter the way he treated all the OTHER people. Gross. Honestly. I know that happened in the last book, but he's around as her “friend” in this one, and that pisses me off. 

Hades is mysterious as always. Still not telling her shit. She's still mad. I can't. We're going in circles. Their relationship could not get worse. (Spoiler: it does). 

Also. If I have to read “are you well?” one more bloody time, I'm going to pull my hair out. 

I read this book to my eight year old daughter, and I can't lie. Neither of us loved it. Neither of us was excited about it. Neither of us cared if we had to skip a night because we had activities to do. 

I'll throw my daughter's thoughts here and then insert mine at the bottom. 

• Angela is really annoying 
• The necromancer is gross and creepy 
• What's going on? 
• Pete the hermit and hans! Yay! 
• I really didn't think that was a good ending 

Angela was a handful, but I think that's to be expected from a young girl her age who's raised as a countess. Hans was great. This story was entirely predictable from page one. As someone who is older than 8, I saw the entire book flash before my eyes. Mostly. I was still surprised by some of the things the Necromancer did. That dude was creepy asf, my daughter hit that nail right on the head. 

I found the writing to be entirely excessive, especially for a kids' book. My daughter got so bored in some of the descriptions (that just went on and on) that she completely zoned out. There were also entire sections of the book that were just there as filler and served no purpose. 

When we finished the book, the first thing my daughter said was “I didn't like that book”. So those are her official stars. ☆

I'm going to go a bit higher, because I enjoyed the Circus friends. Also, because Angela attempted a Romeo and Juliet, and I thought that was fun. ☆☆ 

There were a lot of similarities to Book 1 right off the hop in this one. While I will say right away, the story was vastly different for the most part, I felt like we were still following the same checklist going through this story that was followed in the first. 

I really connected more with Juniper than I did with Lark. While I liked that Lark was quirky, I loved how down to earth Juniper was. I was rooting for her and Puck, while with Lark and Cerulean, I found I didn't really care what happened with them. 

While Juniper's story did follow Larks quite closely, her relationship with Puck was way more fun to follow. He was a hilarious character, I was constantly smiling at the things he did and said, and let's be honest here, just absolutely swooning over him. 

I found myself a lot less confused about what was going on in this one. I didn't have to stop and reread quite as often, although it still did happen. I find Jaster's writing to be purposefully convoluted and overdone. Her prose is extensive… and usually not in a positive way. 

Overall, I liked this one WAY more than book 1. Although better, I still didn't find myself turning to this book, connecting to this book, or entirely invested in this book. So, 3 stars. 

This book is the tiniest of tiny fractions better than a touch of ruin, and only because Hades story of going through Heras trials was slightly more interesting than following Persephone through her very boring whiny life. 

This book followed a touch of ruin much closer than the prior two books and so a ton of this book was just a copy and paste which, is something I really really hate in a second POV addition to a series. 

Hades and Persephone have the worst relationship. It's toxic, pathetic, and aggravating. I don't understand how two people fall in love when they spend zero time together other than having sex and fighting about how shitty they each are. I was honestly exhausted from reading them fight and argue by the first third of the book, and it continued to the bloody end. 

These books are YA with (a ton) of sex, and that just doesn't work for me.