I'm so torn on this one. 

On one hand, I really enjoyed it. The characters were pretty decent and the romance was cute. Dante was really the saving grace for this book, I can't lie, even though I didn't love him, I did have a little crush, and he made me smile. Alessa was a tiny bit (mmm kind of a lot) pathetic and whiny, which was frustrating at times as she's supposed to be chosen by a god to save the literal world, BUT I still liked her character throughout the story. I love the whole touch me you die story, and it was a new take on a story that's been done before, so that was refreshing. 

On the other hand, the story itself was pretty cliche and very typical YA. A chosen one trope with a forbidden romance. Not a whole lot happened in this book plot wise. There was a lot of training, but mostly this book focused on the relationships with Alessa and her friends, and Dante. It was a pretty bland and vanilla book in that aspect. 

I'll meet in the middle on this one. Even though it's not a typical “high” rating, I absolutely recommend this book.

This series started off so strong for me. I was so in love with the world and the magic system that I never thought I would end up here, finding this series to be “meh” at best. 

Right off the hop in this one, we're thrown right back into the same amnesia trope that we started off with in book one. So. Nothing new there. Same old, same old. Then we enter a romantic relationship with Danny. As we saw in book one.. so, nothing new there. But then we get the surprise pregnancy trope! Which threw me off because… why? Her whole pregnancy minus one small plot point could have been an epilogue and not affected my experience with this book at all. We also get a fun time jump! Which is my least favorite thing in books and I hate when authors do it. We literally jump ahead SEVEN years, but yet pretty much nothing has changed in the world. There's a couple people who have hooked up, and Clara's abandoned orphans grew up, but other than that everything is basically the same. Even Vervain is still locked in her tower. 

This book was predictable, extremely slow, and full of filler. Clara's character is so weak considering all of the power she's supposed to behold. She's whiny and she makes all of the worst decisions. Every. Single. Time. 

It took me ages to get through this book. It took me ages to get through this series. I'm just going to sit over here, broken hearted. The Venatrix Chronicles were all 5 stars for me, I loved it so much. I'm quite disappointed that I haven't loved anything else from this author. 

My first thoughts after finishing this and looking back on it, are that it really did not need to be so long. It was unnecessarily long. While a lot of things did happen in this book, there was an equal amount of filler thrown in. There were also 5 different POVs in this book, and I didn't find them all to be needed, again, it just felt like filler. 
I did enjoy this one more than the last as it felt like it had a lot more to it, but overall I didn't enjoy my experience with it. The plot itself was simple, predictable and therefore boring to me. I wasn't excited to see where it was going or what happened to any of the characters and quite frankly, I didn't really care to read about them anymore by the end. 

At no point in this series did I feel any kind of chemistry between Serene and Etienne. Well, that's not totally true, maybe in book one when they were starting to get to know one another there was a spark. But that is it. No chemistry, such boring banter, if you can even call it that, and this excessive need to possess one another that went too far in my opinion. 
I never felt love. Their romance never felt real to me, so that's probably why I struggled with this one so much.  

Now the other 3 female characters that were done so, so wrong. 
Nat. She deserved so much better with the men in her life, including her asshat brothers who assume that she's just a fragile woman who can't handle anything. I hate how weakly she was portrayed.
Old Serene. This poor woman was just trying to live her best life until New Serene just comes in and quite literally pushes her out of existence. Seriously what the shit. Why were her POVs even included? I'll never understand.
I FEEL for Scarlett. Etienne used her to move on with his life and proposed to her even though he had zero feelings for her and then just abandoned her when Serene came back. She had EVERY right to be upset. Pretty sure there's a good chance I might reach the same way she did if I was treated that way. 

I need more Livingston. This entire series I was just praying for more glimpses of him. He's probably the only character I actually connected with. I'll miss him. No one else. 

This book is nothing but frustrating. Serene is awful. She spends over half of the book treating Etienne like absolute crap and for the most ridiculous reason. I found her personality to be quite different from the first and while she's still “rough” and curses and dresses in her own way and what not, I found her to be very whiny. I also found that she made up all these issues in her own mind, caused a bunch of drama over them and then turned around and blamed other people for her own stupidity. 
I loved the beginning with her trying to get back in time, but that part of the book was so short, and then I was left with all of the nonsense surrounding serene and Etienne. 

Don't even get me started on all this other woman crap. It was bad enough in the first one with Will, but having Scarlett around all the time and having them throw it in her face constantly is absolutely brutal. 

I hate a miscommunication trope more than anything, and this was pretty much that, except there just wasn't any communication rather than a miscommunication. I struggled with this one. 

My like for this book may or may not be with my ideas of what this book could have been, rather than what it ended up being. 

I feel no real chemistry between these two. There are moments when they do seem to connect, but there's no burning attraction and desire for the most part. When it does finally come along and I start to get swept up in then, she's swept away from the past and the connection I was beginning to make with them immediately breaks.

 I liked the tension between them, them working together to find a way to get her home and getting closer was cute. But the pacing was off. The book is slow, not much happens to push the plot forwards and there's no character development. 

Long story short, I struggled getting through this one. I was perpetually bored. Constantly zoning out, not paying as much attention as I like to with my books. I liked it, the story was there, maybe the execution threw me off a bit, but I did enjoy the overall idea behind it. I just didn't love any of it. 

I'm bored. 

After we hit part 2 of this book stalled, pretty much nothing happened and I really struggled to get through the rest of it. There's no character development. There's very little movement in the plot. I don't feel any chemistry with any of the mmcs, I felt like they were together because that's the way it's supposed to be. No one even really tried to get to know Darcy, they just doted on her because she's their mate. 

This wasn't it for me. I'm 0% invested in the world or the people. I don't know if I'll continue the series. 

This book doesn't feel like it fits in this series. For starters, the entire series has been one POV. Claras. All of a sudden we have 2 POVs, but Castien's chapters are so short and have zero substance to them, so I don't even understand why they were added in the first place. 

We leave the library entirely, and pretty much that entire magic system behind, which was a huge let down for me as it's my favorite thing about this series and one of the main reasons I've continued on to this point. 

I really liked that this one was more adventure based, and we had to go through all of the different trials in order to obtain an object. I've felt like this series has had very little development and no destination in mind, for the most part this book changed that, so in that sense, I did appreciate the change.

The other reason I've made it this far is the prince. Here's where we get into the biggest issue that I have. Clara is still so stubborn and blind to everything around her. She's unwilling to listen to anyone, or to even consider another approach to her problems and I hate it. She goes completely deaf to everything that isn't exactly the way she feels or thinks. It's absolutely frustrating and takes a lot away from the book for me as I just stew on it for the entire thing. 

We finally get some movement on the romance front, after 3.5 books of the two making goo goo eyes at each other and being unnecessarily cruel, if only to pretend they don't have feelings for one another. Then, in the next heartbeat, it's all ripped away and we're back to square one. Because, of course it is.

I flew through this book. As I said at the beginning, I really liked the adventure that we went on, which almost made it a 4 star book. But then Clara kept up her crap, and Castien got trampled on. And Ivor was Ivor. And I ended up feeling quite defeated by the end. So here we are.