Honestly, I'm not quite sure why I finished this because it made me uncomfortable, unless it was because (a) I feel bad rating and reviewing [in detail] books I don't finish, and (b) I had finally climbed out of a DNF pit and didn't want to fall back in.

The hypersexualization of teenagers is an ongoing and pervasive issue, even setting aside the potentially problematic implications of

Spoiler

dubious consent due to paranormal powers and it's totally fine if they're in love and they get married!

— an ironic juxtaposition to the Biblical worldbuilding and binary morality. Not that I'm saying teenagers can't or shouldn't have sex. But it feels squicky for adults to be writing and reading about it with any level of detail. (I'm aware that this makes me a hypocrite; I'm not claiming otherwise.) To make things worse, the narration features tropes and cliches from Adult/New Adult romance which really shouldn't be applied to YA-aged characters. (I'm tagging this as NA because the main pairing eventually makes that crossover, and because the prose and atmosphere resemble the genre. However, explicit themes are present from the beginning, and for at least half the story one or both of them are underage.) Plus it's all very cisheteronormative, featuring underlying ace erasure.

While the general narrative arc of the trilogy is preserved, a lot of developments lose their impact because it's so stream-of-consciousness, telling-instead-of-showing, abrupt jump cuts between scenes. An alternate-POV version has the potential to be engaging in its own right, but in this case I didn't feel that it added much: just angst and sexy times.

★ 3.5 stars ★

Think Hunger Games meets Baru Cormorant with a dash of Tortall (specifically the Kel or Alanna quartets). FRTC.

I really liked that even Gabrielle really had depth, and I adored Hale. Definitely distinct from the Gallagher Girls series, though it has the same kind of feeling.

3.5 stars.

I greatly enjoyed this book — a gang of adolescent thieves born into a less menacing kind of crime family take on a more experienced con — though it seemed kind of ordinary? Don’t get me wrong, I love the characters and the plot was interesting, but possibly I’m becoming jaded.

THIS is what I was hoping for with the last book, though I didn’t know it then. Kat’s world finally truly collides with Hale’s, with lots of screentime for their respective extended families. And of course getting more Hale backstory was always going to be a huge draw — though we still don’t know his full name, and I suspect we never will.