I really did enjoy the surprises from all the

time traveling

and Izzy and Cassie’s bond, but I also found this book overly long. It felt like by the time I got to 150 pages, not much had actually happened. Cassie just kept

revisiting places in Europe she’d already enjoyed, and the plot didn’t really advance cuz she and Drummond hadn’t met yet.

It also felt like there was some editing needed cuz there were so many pieces of dialogue where contractions should’ve been used but weren’t so the characters had a stilted quality as they spoke. I’ve actually been noticing that a lot in books over the past year, and it irritates me so much cuz native English speakers, which most of the characters in this book are, typically use contractions A LOT when they speak so not much cannot/does not/will not/etc. 

I also wish we had more explanation of what

pain Barbary experienced that made him such an asshole. I mean he was basically just a mustache twirling caricature with the shittiest dialogue for most of the book (including bizarre racist/misogynistic comments that seem to come outta nowhere), and then the vagueness of him touching the Book of Pain and suddenly fighting internally to break away from being a villain felt really lazy and like a cop out. And it REALLY bothered me that his pain hung around like a miasma for some inexplicable reason just so it could infect the villainess. Like what?! Why would it not just have dissipated when it magically got removed from Barbary?! And Barbary didn’t deserve to end his life happily after all the awful shit he put others through. The least the author could’ve done to make that redemption feel somewhat earned is ACTUALLY EXPLAIN WHATEVER TRAUMA HE EXPERIENCED IN HIS LIFE TO MAKE HIM SO SHITTY FOR LITERAL DECADES OF HIS LIFE.

Another thing that irked me was the seeming randomness of the books. The fact that there could be an infinite number meant the author could basically make them up at any point to serve a specific character’s purpose/actions. I mean I already had to suspend plenty of disbelief for a story involving magical books (which I didn’t mind at all!), but some of those books did seem especially ridiculous.

The most glaring example is the Book of Mists. Like that’s the randomest thing ever and only existed so “the woman” (eventually we find out her name’s Rachel) could enter scenes in a creepy/mysterious way to hurt others. Other than that, what would be the purpose of that book? What would anyone really wanna do with mist of all things? The Book of Speed legit existed in a single scene so a character could run really quickly. What the actual stupid hell?!

 

This book started off so strongly and then became such a drag cuz of the things I listed above. Again, I loved the cleverness of some events that occurred with

time travel

, but for the length of 400 pages, I feel like there wasn’t much payoff with the resolution of

the villains.

Oh, and the

insta-love between Lund and Izzy was unnecessary and felt so unbelievably contrived. Nobody in this book had any romantic chemistry so romance shouldn’t have even been hinted at.

And FINALLY, the explanation for the books existing was so fucking lazy and dumb. The author would’ve been better off not bothering to come up with any reason. Like we already went three quarters of the way just believing they exist for unknown reasons, and that’s how it should’ve stayed cuz the

sudden ejection into the “nothing and nowhere” where Cassie’s trauma/negative emotions got expelled to somehow create the books was nonsensical.

Honestly the more I think about this book, the lower my rating goes. There were just so many glaring deficiencies in it that overrode anything good.