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A review by syllareads
The Devil's Thief by Lisa Maxwell
adventurous
mysterious
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
So I am not entirely sure what to think of this book... the rating is very careful because I did enjoy some of its aspects, and yet others left me entirely confused.
The Good Parts
We are yet again following a few of the characters from book one, and since I like the majority of them (or at least found them somewhat intriguing) I am completely fine with that. We gain a few more major spots where the story takes place since Esta and Harte managed to leave New York (which, for the first time because of The Brink, takes us out of the city through some of its main characters) and the author makes a point of addressing some of the problems running rampant in America in the 1900s.
Some of the new characters or new perspectives we gained were also fairly intriguing! I liked Cela a lot, she's a sweetheart who can and will get her way one way or the other (and I respect that), and Ruby was an interesting new character to join the POV gang as well. I'd like to see more of those two in the next book. Viola also had more than one chapter dedicated to her POV which I appreciated because I fell for our hot-headed Italian lady the second she got introduced, basically.
As always, Maxwell's writing is evocative and beautiful and (sadly) one of the main reasons I got through this book as fast as I did - because I just couldn't stop!
The Not-So-Good Parts
Oh boy... where to begin.
The plot was even more convoluted than in the first book. Not only do we havetwo timelines to follow, as Esta accidentally rips herself and Harte out of America in 1902 into America in 1904, a jump that not all characters go through , this book also introduced a big mess of a plotline to follow. The different POVs were nicely done and arranged and it was fairly easy to determine which of the characters we were looking at at the moment, but the plot itself moved far too fast in some places, and exceedingly slow in others. Every character was so vague about their motivation even when it was their turn as a POV character that I found it hard to understand where the book was headed. Motivations got mixed up, tangled (and not in a good way for me), and shoved together, only for the actual climax of the book to be completely different from what I thought it was supposed to be leading towards.
A very small, personal gripe I have with the book is that Esta's worries aboutscrewing up her own timeline by not being sent to the future/changing up too many things in the past/not being able to return to the past because she got never sent to the future seemed to change every single chapter or so. She's already screwing with the timeline by simply being in the past and doing things she's probably not supposed to do! Why is she only worried about it in certain instances - she's basically already created some sort of alternate future universe from the one she remembers. It made the entire thing about the time-travel seem not very well thought-out for me
All in all: it's not a bad book, and the writing made a few things better for me (because I am, after all, a hoe for good writing and I will never be biased about this at all) but overall, I wouldn't exactly recommend this book for a lot of people. It seems not exactly well thought through and the convoluted plotlines, mixed with a lot of POV characters and their own intentions hidden from the reader even while being the one to lead the chapter, made it worse.
The Good Parts
We are yet again following a few of the characters from book one, and since I like the majority of them (or at least found them somewhat intriguing) I am completely fine with that. We gain a few more major spots where the story takes place since Esta and Harte managed to leave New York (which, for the first time because of The Brink, takes us out of the city through some of its main characters) and the author makes a point of addressing some of the problems running rampant in America in the 1900s.
Some of the new characters or new perspectives we gained were also fairly intriguing! I liked Cela a lot, she's a sweetheart who can and will get her way one way or the other (and I respect that), and Ruby was an interesting new character to join the POV gang as well. I'd like to see more of those two in the next book. Viola also had more than one chapter dedicated to her POV which I appreciated because I fell for our hot-headed Italian lady the second she got introduced, basically.
As always, Maxwell's writing is evocative and beautiful and (sadly) one of the main reasons I got through this book as fast as I did - because I just couldn't stop!
The Not-So-Good Parts
Oh boy... where to begin.
The plot was even more convoluted than in the first book. Not only do we have
A very small, personal gripe I have with the book is that Esta's worries about
All in all: it's not a bad book, and the writing made a few things better for me (because I am, after all, a hoe for good writing and I will never be biased about this at all) but overall, I wouldn't exactly recommend this book for a lot of people. It seems not exactly well thought through and the convoluted plotlines, mixed with a lot of POV characters and their own intentions hidden from the reader even while being the one to lead the chapter, made it worse.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism