azarath's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
melissalurie81's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
liliales's review against another edition
5.0
Short version: the best of the series, and a fine conclusion to a series of very interesting events.
I was out driving just after I finished reading the book. It's a bright sunny warm day after two cold extremely rainy ones, and I saw groups of cyclists, a man with a kayak on top of his car, another pulling four motocross bikes, a woman in a car next to me eating an ice cream cone—everywhere I looked people were enjoying a nice day.
I bet most of them are good humans. It got me thinking about how we don't agree about everything, but most of us agree on what a basically good human is, and is not. Yet so many humans still categorize others as, well, Other, by color, ethnicity, wealth, religion, and political view. What if none of those categories mattered because to some group higher than us on the food chain, we were all just one thing? Humans, spoiling the landscape, better for eating than for anything else.
What could we do to prove we're more than food and better than our land-grabbing ancestors? Are we doing that now? I think more of us are trying than it might appear. This book is about how people come to recognize their role in the fight against the "bad humans," and thus against the idea that we wouldn't be worth much more than a shared dinner among carnivores. And it's a story of how those people will succeed, and the Others they work with will succeed along with them, and hard truths will be learned by all.
I was out driving just after I finished reading the book. It's a bright sunny warm day after two cold extremely rainy ones, and I saw groups of cyclists, a man with a kayak on top of his car, another pulling four motocross bikes, a woman in a car next to me eating an ice cream cone—everywhere I looked people were enjoying a nice day.
I bet most of them are good humans. It got me thinking about how we don't agree about everything, but most of us agree on what a basically good human is, and is not. Yet so many humans still categorize others as, well, Other, by color, ethnicity, wealth, religion, and political view. What if none of those categories mattered because to some group higher than us on the food chain, we were all just one thing? Humans, spoiling the landscape, better for eating than for anything else.
What could we do to prove we're more than food and better than our land-grabbing ancestors? Are we doing that now? I think more of us are trying than it might appear. This book is about how people come to recognize their role in the fight against the "bad humans," and thus against the idea that we wouldn't be worth much more than a shared dinner among carnivores. And it's a story of how those people will succeed, and the Others they work with will succeed along with them, and hard truths will be learned by all.
buleth's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoy this series and the fifth installment did not disappoint. However, do not listen to the audiobook if can avoid it, it does a great disservice to a well-written story.
carryontae's review against another edition
2.0
okay, so i need to get this out of the way first: i was SO EXCITED for this book to come out. i was practically counting the days until the release date, and then as soon as the book went live, i downloaded my copy. i was THAT excited.
and that extreme excitement is the only reason i gave this book 3 stars instead of 2. or 1.5. which is something i honestly cannot believe i'm saying about a book in the Others series. >.<
from the moment i started reading this series, i fell in love with the core characters. the found family dynamic that 'written in red' developed between the Others in the lakeside courtyard and meg was so pure, and the characters personal backstories (while extremely sparse at the time) were so interesting and so full of potential. and i'm not even a little ashamed of the fact that meg, simon and sam had my entire heart in their adorable clutches right from the page they were introduced. [same w/ skippy in 'murder of crows']
and knowing that this book was the last in the series, i was expecting the old family dynamic to be back in full swing, just to close things off neatly. if there had to be outside characters involved in the story, i'd hoped they'd be the ones we were already used to--like the ones introduced in books 3/4. [tbh considering the sheer volume of new characters and places that came into play in the last two books, i'd have been fine with passing mentions for most of them.]
this book was just a disappointment all around. and off the top of my head, here's my reasons why:
1) literally every single thing about jimmy/cyrus/whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is. he was an awful character to have (this would've been true in any book but it's especially so bc it's the last one) and even back when the HFL people were the bad guys, we didn't have 1/3 of the book dedicated to the inner mental workings of the annoying bad guys. and we definitely didn't have another 1/3 of the book dedicated to the carrying out of supposedly nefarious plans that in actuality were just fucking annoying.
and that's the thing with jimmy/whatever--he was just. so. annoying. he was always either whining or cursing or whining AND cursing, with little to no variation when it came to the people he was moaning about or the words he used to describe them. he had no reason for doing the things he did, he had no loyalties, not even a single decent passing thought, and yet for all intents and purposes, he was the book's lead character. instead of getting more time with meg and her family, we got idiot manchild being a malicious idiot and ruining everything.
[and his family. god. i still don't know if i'm more horrified or disgusted at the things that his wife and son said/did. and the things that happened to his daughter. and everything about him and his sister was just so ugly--considering the conclusion that bit had, imo it shouldn't have been included in the book to begin with.]
and when the elders finally killed him, we didn't even get a decent description of him dying in excruciating agony. from his pov. which we had to put up w/ for a better portion of the book when he was alive and bugging the fuck out of everyone.
we were robbed.
2) if i'm being honest, the whole extended montgomery family felt unnecessary to me. if this had been a middle book, i'd probably feel differently, but it's the last book of the series. and there was hardly enough mention of the extended family in the earlier books to warrant their extensive, prominent presence all through the book. we'd barely heard about monty's family [apart from lizzie] prior to their arrival in book 4, and all of a sudden, they're the central characters? really?
meanwhile the characters and the relationships that i'd looked forward to seeing more of [meg/simon, meg/simon/sam, meg/sam, meg/skippy, meg/sam/skippy, meg/nathan, meg/the elders, meg/pretty much all of the Others in the courtyard] took a seat way, way, WAY in the back to make room for a set of characters who were repellant and stupid [in a passably good scene] and whose relationships made me want to smash my head against a brick wall.
[also i'm lowkey resentful of how central twyla became to the wolves in such a short time. i know it's weird but to me, it felt like she was taking meg's place, esp when it came to skippy. i'm sorry but there is no way meg would have been sitting inside when skippy was outside half-shifted and heartbroken. she would have been right there with him and if simon and the others had a problem with skippy joining them, she'd have brought the dinner outside, peaceful humans/Others relations be damned.
same w/ pack discipline. it goes beyond my suspension-of-disbelief capability to imagine a world where a wolf combo of simon, nathan and blair [plus sam as puppy alpha, which was adorbs] would be unable to bring their pups in line [or any human pup or human adult for that matter] and would have to defer to twyla instead. i'm sorry, but no.]
3) WHERE WERE THE OTHER BLOOD PROPHETS?? why make such a huge deal about meg and jean and hope and their oh-so-important-and-essential connection to each other and then just drop it for no reason? [ugh if the reason they were barely, very barely there was bc jimmy had to plan a butcher-store robbery, imma flip]
4) the whole 'kidnap meg' plan. only i don't think it can be called a plan since the moron came up with the 'plot' more than 2/3rd of the way through the book. first off, the 'plan' was conceived in three paragraphs, and given how much of jimmy's idiocy we saw, that seems farfetched. he'd need at least seven paragraphs. >.>
second, people have been trying [and absolutely, stupendously failing] to kidnap meg since the series started. and every time an attempt was made, security was amped. in this book, there were daily reports by meg about meg to the elementals and erebus, not to mention the huge, supposedly-terrifying elders who were literally lurking in her backyard bc they were interested in MEG. are we SERIOUSLY expected to believe that not even one of the superpredators would have seen the moron beat up skippy and snatch meg from right under their noses?
i mean, he was DRIVING. and however fast that car might have been able to go, the vampires can shift to actual smoke and the wolves can outrun cars in their sleep. so seriously, what the fuck?
5) there was no post-kidnap reaction scene. like, nothing. five books of freakouts and worry and borderline overprotectiveness when she makes a cut or when there's a suspicion that she /might/ be taken, but when she actually does get abducted, we get nothing. one throwaway line about simon being too upset to deal w/ humans, and one scene where henry yells at the elders. [which i LOVED. go henry, take them out for being doofuses of the first order.]
what about sam and skippy and merri lee and tess and vlad? and erebus and the elementals? [man, i would've loved a full scale elementals vs. the world showdown, we were so robbed] and what about SIMON?! he realises meg's been kidnapped, skip to a few scenes w/ no simon, and the next time he shows up, he's not flipping out or off searching for meg already--nope, he's apparently done that off-screen [?? why??] and a mostly-coherent simon finds the human pack working on where meg might have ended up, and he's not angry w/ them at all. i mean, he kicked them out of the courtyard when he heard about what humans did to other blood prophets' babies bc he automatically associated them w/ things that would harm meg. and here meg has ACTUALLY BEEN HARMED--by a human who was living close to the courtyard--and he's okay w/ having them in her space? i'm sorry, but no.
[having the police be scared shitless about what the repercussions would be if they didn't find meg alive didn't help bc it was meaningless. we've had five books of them knowing how catastrophic things could get if something happened to meg. when something finally did happen to meg, we should have been w/ the people closest to her, not w/ the people who were terrified of whether or not they'd live through the week.]
6) how meg's ptsd was handled. honestly it was bad enough reading about meg's kidnapping from jimmy's pov instead of meg's [i mean seriously, by that point hadn't we been put through enough jimmy? ugh] she was barely holding it together, and the fact that she had so many open cuts and so many cross/close cuts would have been driving her crazy. not that we saw much of that thanks to the lack of meg-pov but whatever.
after simon and the others brought her home, they just mentioned her 'brain not being right' in passing. HOW IS THAT A THING TO MENTION IN PASSING??!! it's a HUGE deal--you have this girl who was just managing to piece together a life for herself BY herself in the outside world, then she gets snatched up and it all goes to shit for her again, and all there is to say about that is 'her brain isn't right'??? she called jimmy 'the Cyrus Controller' for fuck's sake! that's how she saw him and that's how badly he hurt her, and all we got was ONE PASSING MENTION?!
no. just... no.
7) ... where is the trailblazer deck?
8) ... seriously why bring up that specific thing so many times, only to discard it in book 5?
9) speaking of specific discarded things ... where are the men who killed daphne and attacked sam? the fact that those men are out there has been a plot detail since book 1, and we still have no idea who/where they are. we got a scene w/ jack fillmore ffs (who was completely irrelevant and equally unnecessary) but no closure for sam and simon? really?
10) the elders. for a group of supposedly all-powerful, megascary uber-monsters, they were a real letdown. i mean, the notes for cookies thing was kinda cute, but otherwise, i have no idea why everyone in the book was dead scared of them.
11) the general mistreatment of the Others. most of them were relegated to the background, stripped of the characteristics/powers that made them interesting. instead they just became these cutout figures that were present in critical scenes but not actively involved for the most part. the series at the core was about them, and they should have been a much bigger part of this book than human side characters who showed up in book 4. [book 3 too, but mostly 4]
12) every. single. thing. about. meg. and. simon.
we had four--FOUR--books about their ultra slowburn relationship, about both of their doubts and insecurities about where things were going and where they wanted things to go, about meg's ptsd from the compound, about simon not wanting to put the pressure of basically creating a new Others subset together on meg, about body curiosity and touch curiosity and general curiosity, and basically we had four glorious books of the most slow-moving UST ever.
for our patience, we got:
-one (very random imho) line by henry about how meg was going to be simon's mate. [dude, they hadn't talked to each other about anything resembling mating at that point, and i don't think meg was quite there yet but okay]
-one (also very random, also kinda inappropriate) assertion by monty about how simon was in love w/ meg and when was he going to do something about it. [again. dude, they hadn't talked to each other about things like that, and also--SO not your place to tell someone else to make a move on a woman who was barely starting to recover from her most recent trauma, and already had additional sex-related trauma from earlier in her life. also, if you have to tell someone that they're in love--and the someone in question isn't an idiot. which simon is NOT--it's a good bet that they're not ready to deal w/ the reality of their feelings. translation: butt the fuck out seriously wtf?]
-one (INCREDIBLY) rushed declaration-of-feelings scene, complete w/ hurried confirmations (?? kinda??) of the fact that they want to be mates (WHEN WAS THIS DISCUSSED????), some vague notions of being enough, and comepletely out-of-the-blue kisses. all of which was brought about by a missing fortune telling card (???????)
look, i love meg and simon more than life itself, but they were barely in the main parts of the book, and their get-together scene was literally three pages long. if that. their feelings about each other may have been obvious to everyone else, but given what happened in meg's past, an outsider forcing the issue was the absolute wrong way to go here. also given how considerate simon is re: meg's feelings, i highly doubt he'd have pushed the issue. plus he was hella worried about how meg would react to basically being responsible for a new line of Others, so there's no way he'd just spring the whole 'are we mates' thing without, y'know, ACTUALLY TALKING TO HER FIRST.
idk it just felt all over the place to me, plus i'm really bitter that instead of 400+ pages of meg/simon/sam/skippy/original-courtyard-residents shenanigans, we got 300+ pages of jimmy and jimmy-related bullshit, and sort-of-kinda-maybe 100+ pages of meg and her family.
also meg and simon deserved way more and way better than three bloody pages at the end of the book. they were robbed. so were we.
13) HOW MUCH HUMAN DID THEY FUCKING KEEP??????
*bangs head against brick wall for eternity*
my official rating breakdown:
1 star to this book for meg
1 star to this book for simon
1 star to this book for puppy alpha sam. and skippy.
0.5 star to this book for series nostalgia
rounded down to 3 [instead of up to 4] bc fucking jimmy ugh
and that extreme excitement is the only reason i gave this book 3 stars instead of 2. or 1.5. which is something i honestly cannot believe i'm saying about a book in the Others series. >.<
from the moment i started reading this series, i fell in love with the core characters. the found family dynamic that 'written in red' developed between the Others in the lakeside courtyard and meg was so pure, and the characters personal backstories (while extremely sparse at the time) were so interesting and so full of potential. and i'm not even a little ashamed of the fact that meg, simon and sam had my entire heart in their adorable clutches right from the page they were introduced. [same w/ skippy in 'murder of crows']
and knowing that this book was the last in the series, i was expecting the old family dynamic to be back in full swing, just to close things off neatly. if there had to be outside characters involved in the story, i'd hoped they'd be the ones we were already used to--like the ones introduced in books 3/4. [tbh considering the sheer volume of new characters and places that came into play in the last two books, i'd have been fine with passing mentions for most of them.]
this book was just a disappointment all around. and off the top of my head, here's my reasons why:
Spoiler
1) literally every single thing about jimmy/cyrus/whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is. he was an awful character to have (this would've been true in any book but it's especially so bc it's the last one) and even back when the HFL people were the bad guys, we didn't have 1/3 of the book dedicated to the inner mental workings of the annoying bad guys. and we definitely didn't have another 1/3 of the book dedicated to the carrying out of supposedly nefarious plans that in actuality were just fucking annoying.
and that's the thing with jimmy/whatever--he was just. so. annoying. he was always either whining or cursing or whining AND cursing, with little to no variation when it came to the people he was moaning about or the words he used to describe them. he had no reason for doing the things he did, he had no loyalties, not even a single decent passing thought, and yet for all intents and purposes, he was the book's lead character. instead of getting more time with meg and her family, we got idiot manchild being a malicious idiot and ruining everything.
[and his family. god. i still don't know if i'm more horrified or disgusted at the things that his wife and son said/did. and the things that happened to his daughter. and everything about him and his sister was just so ugly--considering the conclusion that bit had, imo it shouldn't have been included in the book to begin with.]
and when the elders finally killed him, we didn't even get a decent description of him dying in excruciating agony. from his pov. which we had to put up w/ for a better portion of the book when he was alive and bugging the fuck out of everyone.
we were robbed.
2) if i'm being honest, the whole extended montgomery family felt unnecessary to me. if this had been a middle book, i'd probably feel differently, but it's the last book of the series. and there was hardly enough mention of the extended family in the earlier books to warrant their extensive, prominent presence all through the book. we'd barely heard about monty's family [apart from lizzie] prior to their arrival in book 4, and all of a sudden, they're the central characters? really?
meanwhile the characters and the relationships that i'd looked forward to seeing more of [meg/simon, meg/simon/sam, meg/sam, meg/skippy, meg/sam/skippy, meg/nathan, meg/the elders, meg/pretty much all of the Others in the courtyard] took a seat way, way, WAY in the back to make room for a set of characters who were repellant and stupid [in a passably good scene] and whose relationships made me want to smash my head against a brick wall.
[also i'm lowkey resentful of how central twyla became to the wolves in such a short time. i know it's weird but to me, it felt like she was taking meg's place, esp when it came to skippy. i'm sorry but there is no way meg would have been sitting inside when skippy was outside half-shifted and heartbroken. she would have been right there with him and if simon and the others had a problem with skippy joining them, she'd have brought the dinner outside, peaceful humans/Others relations be damned.
same w/ pack discipline. it goes beyond my suspension-of-disbelief capability to imagine a world where a wolf combo of simon, nathan and blair [plus sam as puppy alpha, which was adorbs] would be unable to bring their pups in line [or any human pup or human adult for that matter] and would have to defer to twyla instead. i'm sorry, but no.]
3) WHERE WERE THE OTHER BLOOD PROPHETS?? why make such a huge deal about meg and jean and hope and their oh-so-important-and-essential connection to each other and then just drop it for no reason? [ugh if the reason they were barely, very barely there was bc jimmy had to plan a butcher-store robbery, imma flip]
4) the whole 'kidnap meg' plan. only i don't think it can be called a plan since the moron came up with the 'plot' more than 2/3rd of the way through the book. first off, the 'plan' was conceived in three paragraphs, and given how much of jimmy's idiocy we saw, that seems farfetched. he'd need at least seven paragraphs. >.>
second, people have been trying [and absolutely, stupendously failing] to kidnap meg since the series started. and every time an attempt was made, security was amped. in this book, there were daily reports by meg about meg to the elementals and erebus, not to mention the huge, supposedly-terrifying elders who were literally lurking in her backyard bc they were interested in MEG. are we SERIOUSLY expected to believe that not even one of the superpredators would have seen the moron beat up skippy and snatch meg from right under their noses?
i mean, he was DRIVING. and however fast that car might have been able to go, the vampires can shift to actual smoke and the wolves can outrun cars in their sleep. so seriously, what the fuck?
5) there was no post-kidnap reaction scene. like, nothing. five books of freakouts and worry and borderline overprotectiveness when she makes a cut or when there's a suspicion that she /might/ be taken, but when she actually does get abducted, we get nothing. one throwaway line about simon being too upset to deal w/ humans, and one scene where henry yells at the elders. [which i LOVED. go henry, take them out for being doofuses of the first order.]
what about sam and skippy and merri lee and tess and vlad? and erebus and the elementals? [man, i would've loved a full scale elementals vs. the world showdown, we were so robbed] and what about SIMON?! he realises meg's been kidnapped, skip to a few scenes w/ no simon, and the next time he shows up, he's not flipping out or off searching for meg already--nope, he's apparently done that off-screen [?? why??] and a mostly-coherent simon finds the human pack working on where meg might have ended up, and he's not angry w/ them at all. i mean, he kicked them out of the courtyard when he heard about what humans did to other blood prophets' babies bc he automatically associated them w/ things that would harm meg. and here meg has ACTUALLY BEEN HARMED--by a human who was living close to the courtyard--and he's okay w/ having them in her space? i'm sorry, but no.
[having the police be scared shitless about what the repercussions would be if they didn't find meg alive didn't help bc it was meaningless. we've had five books of them knowing how catastrophic things could get if something happened to meg. when something finally did happen to meg, we should have been w/ the people closest to her, not w/ the people who were terrified of whether or not they'd live through the week.]
6) how meg's ptsd was handled. honestly it was bad enough reading about meg's kidnapping from jimmy's pov instead of meg's [i mean seriously, by that point hadn't we been put through enough jimmy? ugh] she was barely holding it together, and the fact that she had so many open cuts and so many cross/close cuts would have been driving her crazy. not that we saw much of that thanks to the lack of meg-pov but whatever.
after simon and the others brought her home, they just mentioned her 'brain not being right' in passing. HOW IS THAT A THING TO MENTION IN PASSING??!! it's a HUGE deal--you have this girl who was just managing to piece together a life for herself BY herself in the outside world, then she gets snatched up and it all goes to shit for her again, and all there is to say about that is 'her brain isn't right'??? she called jimmy 'the Cyrus Controller' for fuck's sake! that's how she saw him and that's how badly he hurt her, and all we got was ONE PASSING MENTION?!
no. just... no.
7) ... where is the trailblazer deck?
8) ... seriously why bring up that specific thing so many times, only to discard it in book 5?
9) speaking of specific discarded things ... where are the men who killed daphne and attacked sam? the fact that those men are out there has been a plot detail since book 1, and we still have no idea who/where they are. we got a scene w/ jack fillmore ffs (who was completely irrelevant and equally unnecessary) but no closure for sam and simon? really?
10) the elders. for a group of supposedly all-powerful, megascary uber-monsters, they were a real letdown. i mean, the notes for cookies thing was kinda cute, but otherwise, i have no idea why everyone in the book was dead scared of them.
11) the general mistreatment of the Others. most of them were relegated to the background, stripped of the characteristics/powers that made them interesting. instead they just became these cutout figures that were present in critical scenes but not actively involved for the most part. the series at the core was about them, and they should have been a much bigger part of this book than human side characters who showed up in book 4. [book 3 too, but mostly 4]
12) every. single. thing. about. meg. and. simon.
we had four--FOUR--books about their ultra slowburn relationship, about both of their doubts and insecurities about where things were going and where they wanted things to go, about meg's ptsd from the compound, about simon not wanting to put the pressure of basically creating a new Others subset together on meg, about body curiosity and touch curiosity and general curiosity, and basically we had four glorious books of the most slow-moving UST ever.
for our patience, we got:
-one (very random imho) line by henry about how meg was going to be simon's mate. [dude, they hadn't talked to each other about anything resembling mating at that point, and i don't think meg was quite there yet but okay]
-one (also very random, also kinda inappropriate) assertion by monty about how simon was in love w/ meg and when was he going to do something about it. [again. dude, they hadn't talked to each other about things like that, and also--SO not your place to tell someone else to make a move on a woman who was barely starting to recover from her most recent trauma, and already had additional sex-related trauma from earlier in her life. also, if you have to tell someone that they're in love--and the someone in question isn't an idiot. which simon is NOT--it's a good bet that they're not ready to deal w/ the reality of their feelings. translation: butt the fuck out seriously wtf?]
-one (INCREDIBLY) rushed declaration-of-feelings scene, complete w/ hurried confirmations (?? kinda??) of the fact that they want to be mates (WHEN WAS THIS DISCUSSED????), some vague notions of being enough, and comepletely out-of-the-blue kisses. all of which was brought about by a missing fortune telling card (???????)
look, i love meg and simon more than life itself, but they were barely in the main parts of the book, and their get-together scene was literally three pages long. if that. their feelings about each other may have been obvious to everyone else, but given what happened in meg's past, an outsider forcing the issue was the absolute wrong way to go here. also given how considerate simon is re: meg's feelings, i highly doubt he'd have pushed the issue. plus he was hella worried about how meg would react to basically being responsible for a new line of Others, so there's no way he'd just spring the whole 'are we mates' thing without, y'know, ACTUALLY TALKING TO HER FIRST.
idk it just felt all over the place to me, plus i'm really bitter that instead of 400+ pages of meg/simon/sam/skippy/original-courtyard-residents shenanigans, we got 300+ pages of jimmy and jimmy-related bullshit, and sort-of-kinda-maybe 100+ pages of meg and her family.
also meg and simon deserved way more and way better than three bloody pages at the end of the book. they were robbed. so were we.
13) HOW MUCH HUMAN DID THEY FUCKING KEEP??????
*bangs head against brick wall for eternity*
my official rating breakdown:
1 star to this book for meg
1 star to this book for simon
1 star to this book for puppy alpha sam. and skippy.
0.5 star to this book for series nostalgia
rounded down to 3 [instead of up to 4] bc fucking jimmy ugh
princessjay3's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
nemerith's review against another edition
5.0
Sigh... I'm both happy and sad at the moment. Happy because (of course) it was such a great book but also sad since it was the last we see of our friends.
Worldbuilding:
As far as I know, this is the last book about the Lakeside Courtyard (*sniff*) so it was nice that we pretty much stayed here the whole instalment.
As always, all scenes and environments were very well written, letting my mind remain fully immersed in the story.
Character development:
Meg has come such a long way from when we first met her, trying to escape the Controllers. It feels with this book, she has come full circle. She has grown and learned so so much. I love how she used her prophecy cards instead of making cuts, even though it was still very tempting. She and Meri Lee are getting really good at deciphering their meaning and I hope we will see other blood prophets use her method in later books.
Simon steps up for his people in this instalment, trying to keep the worst of some really bad influence out of the different packs living in Lakeside Courtyard, even if his hands are partially tied by the Elders. Meg and Simon are confused about their feelings for each other, which made me roll my eyes on numerous occasions, seriously :)
In this instalment, I really felt how tight the different packs are, to their own and to the other packs living in the Courtyard. They have their home, and they will defend it in any way possible.
As we have come to expect from the author, all the characters feel vibrant and alive. Very well written!
Pacing and flow:
The whole book you just know bad stuff is going to happen, and every time you're like 'is this it?' (it wasn't :p). It kept me on my toes and I had so many problems putting the book down, but I really needed some sleep (in my defence, it was 4.30 in the morning). Great balance between action and conversation.
The book:
The book was well written with no (noticeable) errors. There is no sex described (if that is important to you.
The book is 397 pages long, spread over 33 chapters and written from multiple point of views (mainly Meg and Simon and Vlad).
Final thoughts:
It seems this is the last book for Meg and Simon (so far) and that makes me freaking sad. Hope we will get to see how they are doing in the spinoff though! (I mean, that ending can't be the only thing we get, right?)
This series has been one of my favourites from book 1 onwards and I can't recommend it enough!
Worldbuilding:
As far as I know, this is the last book about the Lakeside Courtyard (*sniff*) so it was nice that we pretty much stayed here the whole instalment.
As always, all scenes and environments were very well written, letting my mind remain fully immersed in the story.
Character development:
Meg has come such a long way from when we first met her, trying to escape the Controllers. It feels with this book, she has come full circle. She has grown and learned so so much. I love how she used her prophecy cards instead of making cuts, even though it was still very tempting. She and Meri Lee are getting really good at deciphering their meaning and I hope we will see other blood prophets use her method in later books.
Simon steps up for his people in this instalment, trying to keep the worst of some really bad influence out of the different packs living in Lakeside Courtyard, even if his hands are partially tied by the Elders. Meg and Simon are confused about their feelings for each other, which made me roll my eyes on numerous occasions, seriously :)
In this instalment, I really felt how tight the different packs are, to their own and to the other packs living in the Courtyard. They have their home, and they will defend it in any way possible.
As we have come to expect from the author, all the characters feel vibrant and alive. Very well written!
Pacing and flow:
The whole book you just know bad stuff is going to happen, and every time you're like 'is this it?' (it wasn't :p). It kept me on my toes and I had so many problems putting the book down, but I really needed some sleep (in my defence, it was 4.30 in the morning). Great balance between action and conversation.
The book:
The book was well written with no (noticeable) errors. There is no sex described (if that is important to you.
The book is 397 pages long, spread over 33 chapters and written from multiple point of views (mainly Meg and Simon and Vlad).
Final thoughts:
It seems this is the last book for Meg and Simon (so far) and that makes me freaking sad. Hope we will get to see how they are doing in the spinoff though! (I mean, that ending can't be the only thing we get, right?)
This series has been one of my favourites from book 1 onwards and I can't recommend it enough!
loishojmark's review against another edition
5.0
I'm just so glad that the serie will continue... even if it's with other MCs. Every book has been a joy to read.
brokenrecord's review against another edition
4.0
Pretty solid ending to this series. The main plot actually interested me more than the plots of the past couple — it might actually be my favorite of the series? The book felt a little more focused on Lakeside and its inhabitants than other random new side characters, which was how the last book or two felt. And Meg and Simon continue to be a delight — in particular, I loved how they basically were upset any time they had to spend more than a few minutes apart from one another. Like, they practically live together, see each other ALL the time, and yet Simon would get grumbly if he couldn't accompany Meg to work. My only real complaint is And I also still really love the humor in this series — moments like Meg telling the Elders they were bad puppies were just endlessly delightful for me.
Spoiler
while I was thrilled that they finally decided to take the leap to a romantic relationship, it felt a bit anticlimactic? It's a weird thing, because it definitely felt appropriate for them and how their relationship had developed thus far, and a like big, romantic, passionate scene with fireworks and the like wouldn't really fit them, but at the same time… I kind of wanted something like that! Something at least a little more passionate, I guess? But it was still a super cute ending.elli_yu's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0