lenorayoder's reviews
132 reviews

There are so many things wrong with this book we’ll just have to stick to the highlights

1. I love time travel and this is technically a time travel book but it might as well not be for all that it factors into the plot and character’s thoughts. The female lead could have been taken from England in the same time as the male lead and this book would have been basically the same. 👎

2. The female lead is the hottest woman who ever lived and the male lead is the hottest man who ever lived. You can’t go two pages without some super hot physical attribute being mentioned 

3. The characters are very one dimensional. When they each first think that they love the other, I’m left wondering why. They talk about each other’s non-physical qualities, but we’re never shown proof of them, or shown when the other learned of these qualities. We’re told instead of shown

4. Overall the kind of book people point to when they make fun of romance novels. Barely any plot, kind of silly, contrived conflict, boring characters, and the smut isn’t even good. 

I’ve been trying to find an alternative to Highlander that doesn’t have the weird vibes (if you know you know, the beginning was so promising too), and this was not it. Don’t recommend. 

This book is very hard to rate. I love a lot of the plot, though it’s a little slow to get started. Great ending. I like the characters at the end of the book, but the writing for our heroine is all over the place for the majority of the story. She’s inconsistent and unlikeable, and several times characters (mostly the heroine) make decisions that are entirely in service of a plot point the author wants to get to, and those decisions feel obviously out of character. Some great writing, but also some lazy writing. Annoyingly frequent fatphobia. A bit frustrating in that with some editing I think this book could be really great, the story has great bones. 

As a big time travel fan I have to add that the way Deveraux navigates it in this book is genius. We learn just enough for the time travel to make sense and no more - no getting lost in the weeds, no angsting over paradoxes. Its rules and function are perfectly molded to serve the characters, romance, and plot. 

Worth the read, especially since it’s my understanding that this is kind of a landmark romance book, but making it through the beginning was tough. 

A little better than the first book, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. 

A fitting ending, for the most part I like where we ended up. 

Some parts, especially the beginning, really dragged. Several characters made stupid choices that seemed out of character just so that there could be more drama, which came across as lazy writing and was frustrating to read. Never showing a real downside for Percy with

Achilles’ Curse

bothered me. 

It really feels like everyone is growing up in this book. The tension and anticipation builds well here, this is a great ramp-up for a final book. I like that as the books go on, Percy's solutions become more and more unconventional and fair. Annabeth lashing out at the Sphinx was the only part of the book that struck me as odd/unrealistic with what we've seen so far, it felt very out of place for her character. Looking forward to the conclusion!

I liked it, but at this point Percy’s lack of knowledge feels a little ridiculous. The chapter titles aren’t as good as the first book. 

Fun, but definitely felt more like a transitional/informative part of a larger series than a strong story of its own. 

Restarting this series as I never finished, so I remembered the main story beats which made it fun to notice all the clues along the way. What a great start to a series! Still good as an adult, but I wish I’d known about these when I was younger. 

A solid YA mystery with solid characters and themes. Having chapters from different character perspectives really works for this story, and I think the time we spend with each character is balanced well. Not surprised this was adapted into a show, it seems well suited for it. When it comes down to it though, none of the characters are very interesting/complex, and I'm not interested in reading the sequel.

I liked it, but much of the book is spent worrying about time travel instead of having adventures in the past. Not much plot to go around.