A review by jelkebooks
The Fiery Heart by Richelle Mead

adventurous emotional mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

 After absolutely adoring book three, I was super excited to continue on with this series, but this kind of ended up being a bit of a let down. Not necceccarily because this is a bad book, but more so because this is EXTREMELY filler. 90% of this book was just pure fluff, nothing of actual substance. It honestly made for quite a boring read. 
I do have to say that the 10% of actual plot in this book, were really interesting. We did a lot of researching, and experimenting this book. It didn't make for the most engaging story, but the implications from what we discovered could mean A LOT for the rest of this series, and this world. So despite this book being quite underwhelming, it did get me even more hyped to continue on with this series. Especially because of the ending of this book. Oh my god, that's a massive game changer and I'm super excited to see how that is going to turn out.
A big part of this book was the romance between Sydney and Adrian, and honestly I was quite dissapointed by it. I can't believe I just said that. I've been waiting for this to happen the entire series, and I loved their build up in the last book. I just think they went from 0 to 100 really quickly in this book. I mean, it's not fully 0 because like I said there was quite a lot of set up, but we really went to level 100 this book. The constant talk about how they are meant to be, and soulmates, just made me roll my eyes. It didn't seem that realistic for them to be that way immediately. I don't know. I also didn't like how most of Adrian's character developement in this book was solely because of Sydney, and how she seemed to see him as something else she needed to take care off. It just gave me the ick, and no matter how many times they kept saying they were equals and a team, it truly never felt like it. I don't know. It just didn't make the romance work for me.
A massive shame in this book is the lack of our side characters within this book. Like I said most of this book is about Adrian and Sydney's relationship, and I did appreciate getting Adrian's POV in this book as well. Besides the romance the second focus was Sydney's family, with her sister now joining the main cast. That means we barely get anything with Jill, Eddie, Angeline, and Trey (and our new guy Neil) and I thought that was such a massive shame. The cast of side characters and their found familyness was one of my favourite elements of this series, and the scenes we did get with them in this book I absolutely adored. I just wish we had a bit more of them, and that their characters weren't reduced to stupid relationship dramas within this book. 
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