After reading the first book in the series, I was chomping at the bit to read this one. How could I walk away from that ending without wanting to marathon it all? And while I wouldn't say I was disappointed by it, I did like it less than the first.

I'm not a huge fan of romance a lot of the time, but The Inheritance Games had what I thought was a really good balance of mystery plot vs. romance plot. There were a couple moments where I wrinkled my nose at some heavy-handed romance, but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the main plot. With this book, I feel like that balance was thrown out of whack. The first 2/3 felt like it was just the love triangle with some filler thrown in, and most of the heavy plot points were all crammed into the last 1/3, which made it feel like an afterthought. If the mystery plot points were more evenly distributed, I think I would have been more satisfied with it overall.

That isn't to say I didn't enjoy the romance. Compared to the first book, the romantic scenes felt a lot more natural, which was a big plus for me. This could be because we're more familiar with the characters, but I think the writing itself improved when it came to how Avery thought of the boys.

One more wish I would have had for this book would have been for Xander to be more involved. Based on the ending of the first book, it really seemed like he would be a main focus. I was excited to learn more about him, being that he's my favorite Hawthorne, but that didn't really pan out. In fact, a lot of the time, the other characters were actively leaving him out of the mystery. Kinda the opposite of what I expected/hoped for.

Despite the shortcomings I felt this book had, I'll continue the series with The Final Gambit when it comes out in 2022. I'll just be crossing my fingers that we'll have more of the fun puzzles that have always been my favorite aspect of the series, less of the boy troubles.

I usually have a moderate tolerance for dumb teenagers making dumb decisions, but this was just on a whole different level than what I expected. Not to mention the cacophony of HIPAA violations that just took me out of the story at every turn. No medical professional would act the way Barb did.

If you come into this expecting to get something like The Fault in Our Stars, you won't get it. You'll get the diet version.

This was my favorite book as a kid, and continues to be my favorite children's book today. Still have my battered, well loved copy from when I was a little baby.

I enjoyed this book more than most of the newer Stephen Kings that have come out. It felt like I was reading a classic King. However, I did find that the climax of the story was pretty lackluster and the "reveal" at the very end seemed pretty unnecessary and done purely for shock value. Overall, though, I did have a good time with it.