Wow! I am so glad I brought this book into quarantine with me, because I could not put it down and read through most of this book in 2 days straight. I am absolutely impressed with how good this book was and genuinly surprised that I read so many disappointed reviews before reading it myself. So I'm gladly going to share my thoughts on this book and try and convince you to read it as well, if you haven't picked it up yet!
“Through love, all is possible.”
The story starts with a loooot of information, setting the time and place of
Crescent City, an imaginary city in
Lunathion. I think
Sarah J. Maas did a great job with the world building in this one, even though it might come across like "info dumping" in the beginning. Some might say that the build up of the story takes way too much time and pages, but honestly, that's what's needed in a book like this. Otherwise you would not be able to follow the story and understand the setting at all. However, I have to admit that I had a bit of a hard time getting settled in this new urban fantasy world as it contains literally every paranormal being I've ever heard of and many more.
The rest of this review definitely contains spoilers!
Bryce Quinlan: our half-human-half-fae protagonist is a party girl and a very strong minded woman. Tragedy hits close to her when her best friend
Danika, a wolf pack leader, and her entire pack gets killed in their appartment whilst she's out partying. Part of the group is
Connor, a guy that has been trying to go on a date with Bryce for five years and finally got her to accept one. When Bryce discovers the murder scene at her appartment, an unknown creature runs away and she tries to follow and hunt it down, unsuccessfully. However, she finds it attacking and injuring an angel and tries to rescue him until help arrives. It's very clear that this tragedy traumatzes Bryce, and she only keeps up appearances of being a party girl to everyone else as a facade after these events. In truth she stops drinking and taking drugs and becomes very isolated. By taking a loan out of her salary to buy a
chimera's freedom from her boss, it becomes clear that she also has a truly good heart. So, a party girl on the outside, but a softie with a golden heart on the inside. Just the kind of main character that I like!
“...There's nothing wrong with a party girl. I don't get why the world thinks there is...Its easier for me---when people assume the worst about what I am. It lets me see who they really are -- Bryce”
The build up between Bryce and Connor's possible relationship already made the first couple of chapters seem like such a good intro, because from the beginning I shipped them and I had a very bad feeling that Connor would die too early. Sarah J. Maas managed to break my heart in the first 10% of the book already. Cue
Hunt Athalar. A worthy replacement for the love interest for Bryce. The
Second Love trope starts to creep up on us, and I feel like all readers expect the unsurprising. Whilst Hunt and Bryce have to work together to try and figure out who murdered Danika, they slowly but surely develop
sexual feelings for one another. And boooyyy did I ship them!
Bryce starts off as very closed off and being rude to Hunt whilst she tries and starts to investigate her best friend's murder. The angel Hunt becomes her shadow in order to protect her from any dangers that could arise, not knowing that she is perfectly able to defend herself as she also has a lot of friends in high places. More and more, Hunt discovers the different layers that make up Bryce and they start to like each other, and gradually develop more feelings. When those feelings are nearly at a peak, Hunt gets injured badly as his boss and owner (as Hunt became a slave after a failed rebellion of the angels)
Micah cuts off his wings after they wrongly accuse Danika's mother
Sabine, the Prime apparent of the wolves, of murdering Danika and things escalate.
Then, Hunt's betrayal (wanting to buy synth to overthrow his master Micah and knowing and keeping the drug details from Bryce) came as a bit of a shock to me. It was very surprising and out of the blue for me, even though I expected something to mess up his "perfect personality" and "boyfriend material" characteristics. Nonetheless, I am really glad that Sarah J. Maas decided against the endless-seeming moping around and feeling betrayed trope of her protagonist and actually made Bryce realize very quickly that she still wanted to save Hunt, when she finds out that he's been sold to his worst enemy.
“I see you, Quinlan, he silently conveyed to her. And I like all of it. Right back at you, her half smile seemed to say.”
This leads to the epic final 100-ish pages of the book, that everybody else has marked as the "redemption pages" of the book, if they did not enjoy the beginning and middle part of it. Action packed like nothing else and absolutely gripping, these pages are what made this book such a great read! Bryce and Hunt face their deaths multiple times in these chapters and every time all hope seems lost, but they power through it! Bryce turns out to be
Heir to the Starborn Fae, just like her brother
Ruhn, but she's even more powerful than him and their father, the King.
Ruhn Danaan: To be quite honest, I don't really care that much for this character! I know a lot of people like Ruhn, but so far I'm not very impressed. I'm glad he's a good brother and tries to take care of Bryce and doesn't care about their heritage and standing in the royal line. He's not intimitaded by Bryce after finding out just how powerful she truly is and I really like the dynamic between him and his friends
Dylan and
Flynn! But other than that I feel like his character still has to prove himself to me. Hopefully in the next book! I am rather looking forward to his "relationship" with the new witch queen
Hypaxia, because I'm sure this will turn into something very interesting as she's already proven herself to be a very powerful character! She's the one who freed Hunt after all, so that's already all I need to know to make me appreciate her role!
Micah: The big baddie. Turns out, Micah was way worse than I initially thought. I did suspect that he had some dirt on himself, but for him to turn out to be the villain of the story, that I honestly did not see coming! One thing that I really don't like, is when a villain thinks of themselves as untouchable and just tells their entire plan and reasoning for their actions to their victims, who will obviously win against them in the end. This is just such a useless waste of time, but was necessary for Bryce to clear her and Danika's name in front of everybody else (as it was conveniently broadcasted to all the powerful people of the lands). I think Micah made for a great villain and the writing was superb!
Lehabah: This fire sprite was honestly one of the cutest character in the story. I don't know why, but she kind of reminded me of Tinker Bell...
“Then let the world know that my first act of freedom was to help my friends.”
Jesiba: I really don't know what to think of her. The most interesting chapter including her was the epilogue, and I'm guessing she will play a bigger role in the next book, but right now I don't really know if I like her. She always acted very indifferent towards Bryce, even though I think she should have cut her some slack? What I want to know is, if she knew about Bryce's true heritage all this time, or if she was surprised and found out at the same time as everybody else.
Aidas: I'm very excited to see more of Aidas in the next book, I think he's going to play a very big role! Somehow he knew about Bryce's heritage and has been appearing as "a friend" to her since she went to the Oracle as a child. I want to find out what his involvement with Jesiba is and how they know one another!
So all in all after writing this review, I will give this book a rating of
4.5 Stars even though I initially rated this a 5 star read.
