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A review by katyanaish
By a Thread by Jennifer Estep
2.0
Well. This one was honestly disappointing to me. I'll admit that the ending was good, and did a lot to salvage the book, but I was pretty irritated for the first 200 pages.
The biggest flaw in this book is Bria.
I know that she was never thrilled with Gin being an assassin, but she did make her peace with it. So in this book, when Bria suddenly morphed into a female Donovan Caine, I was pretty shocked. I thought it was needless drama in the Gin/Bria relationship, and was way out of character for her. It made her seem like an idiot. The fact is, with their history, there is plenty of other drama that is in-character and way more interesting that the author could have tapped in this book. The two of them just becoming friends, now that the Mab situation is over, would have been fun to explore.
And there was a shitty additional side-effect to the Bria-as-moral-police development: it made me disbelieve her relationship with Finn. Which is too bad, because I thought their relationship developed beautifully over the last few books. But it occurred to me, during one of Bria's bitchy, self-righteous, condescending rants: how can she be in love with Finn? If Gin is the very devil herself, doesn't Finn at least qualify as a demon? So then either she's a hypocrite on top of being a judgmental asshole (as in, it is okay when Finn does it, but not when Gin does), or she has no consistency and is now a flat, 2-dimensional character (which I frankly think is the case).
Look, I get what Estep was trying to do. She was trying to set Bria and Donovan up for this parallel relationship. It was a re-tread, as far as I am concerned. Bria HAD this concern, and got over it when she showed up at Gin and Owen's Christmas party a few books back. She chose to get over her black-and-white view of the world. The events of the series since then should only have reinforced Bria's view of the world in shades of gray. There is just no reason at all for her to revert to her old self, and then twist into an even more extreme version. It was forced by the author to play against Donovan Caine, and it felt forced. It was a bad call.
And speaking of, if I never saw Donovan Caine again in this series, I would have been MORE than fine with that. Him popping up again was nauseating, to say the least. Him popping up with Bria's best friend/shoulda-been sister-who-is-just-like-an-angelic-version-of-Gin-so-of-course-Donovan-loves-her ... again, way too contrived. This whole book felt horribly, horribly contrived.
Really disappointing. I hope this doesn't define the new, post-Mab direction for what was one of the best UF series currently running.
The biggest flaw in this book is Bria.
I know that she was never thrilled with Gin being an assassin, but she did make her peace with it. So in this book, when Bria suddenly morphed into a female Donovan Caine, I was pretty shocked. I thought it was needless drama in the Gin/Bria relationship, and was way out of character for her. It made her seem like an idiot. The fact is, with their history, there is plenty of other drama that is in-character and way more interesting that the author could have tapped in this book. The two of them just becoming friends, now that the Mab situation is over, would have been fun to explore.
And there was a shitty additional side-effect to the Bria-as-moral-police development: it made me disbelieve her relationship with Finn. Which is too bad, because I thought their relationship developed beautifully over the last few books. But it occurred to me, during one of Bria's bitchy, self-righteous, condescending rants: how can she be in love with Finn? If Gin is the very devil herself, doesn't Finn at least qualify as a demon? So then either she's a hypocrite on top of being a judgmental asshole (as in, it is okay when Finn does it, but not when Gin does), or she has no consistency and is now a flat, 2-dimensional character (which I frankly think is the case).
Look, I get what Estep was trying to do. She was trying to set Bria and Donovan up for this parallel relationship. It was a re-tread, as far as I am concerned. Bria HAD this concern, and got over it when she showed up at Gin and Owen's Christmas party a few books back. She chose to get over her black-and-white view of the world. The events of the series since then should only have reinforced Bria's view of the world in shades of gray. There is just no reason at all for her to revert to her old self, and then twist into an even more extreme version. It was forced by the author to play against Donovan Caine, and it felt forced. It was a bad call.
And speaking of, if I never saw Donovan Caine again in this series, I would have been MORE than fine with that. Him popping up again was nauseating, to say the least. Him popping up with Bria's best friend/shoulda-been sister-who-is-just-like-an-angelic-version-of-Gin-so-of-course-Donovan-loves-her ... again, way too contrived. This whole book felt horribly, horribly contrived.
Really disappointing. I hope this doesn't define the new, post-Mab direction for what was one of the best UF series currently running.