Sometimes a book is too long for its own good. I was nervous going into this book since I knew how little was left to tell after the cliffhanger. This is the second part of a retelling inspired by East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

Despite the decent number of pages there is very little world building, character growth, or understanding of the magic or reasons behind the story. A good 50% of the book is Valera second guessing herself.

I was disappointed with how much filler was involved with this book to stretch a tiny bit of story oher 400+ pages. It easily could have been 250+ pages shorter. At some point never ending peril gets boring and a lot of the issues Valera runs into have no effect on the books ending.

While it is still cute, it was very slow, and the final chapters didn't feel like they lived up to all the promise of the first book. I did appreciate that it was romantic without being crazy spicy. And the twists the author did include were enjoyable, though somewhat predictable. Other pieces that seemed like they'd be very important from how much was mentioned ended up playing no part in the ending at all.


POSSIBLE SPOILER:


One of the side characters starts out annoying as all get out and I wanted to smack her, then just as I was starting to like her she was written out of the book and we never hear another word. Considering how important she was to Valera I feel like she at least should have been brought up at the end.