you know the saying “look in the mirror before you head out the door and take off 1 accessory”? this book desperately needed that. i feel like about 30%-40% of this could have been cut down or cut out. this book was unnecessarily long, and it felt like a lot of things happened for the sake of shock and to cycle in new characters. 

i wish that there was less of the “this is my mate, how am i sooooo lucky” and “i am so lucky to have such amazing friends, and i need to be courageous for them” type of inner monologues that we saw from grace. it was overkill and unbearably cheesy. 

i think the plot line of the quest type missions they had to go on was kind of cool, but they also seemed meaningless like they had never existed before and only existed to serve the necessity of some sort of adventure mission to find an object of significance that could solve some overarching problem. the pattern is feeling repetitive through each of the books. 

i do really like some of the characters, like flint, remy, calder, and macy. they have grown a lot and contribute so much to the plot and conflicts in this book. i used to love grace but she’s annoying the hell out of me now, even hudson is getting too sappy for me. i miss the days of this series being some petty high school dramatics between paranormals; it has very much lurched into “we’re the underdogs and have to save the world despite all odds against us” which is totally bs when when they also consider themselves some of the most powerful paranormals in existence. 

there are also a lot of points where a solution to a problem is glaringly obvious and yet the “super smart” grace can’t see what’s basically hitting her with a billboard. conversely, there are times where grace encounters a problem and then thinks up a solution that is a complete reach and yet it magically works out. 

TLDR; this is the first book of the series i’ve disliked a majority of. it was way too long and way too cheesy, could have cut down 40% of it probably. i powered through it because i think the next 2 books will be a lot better, and because i did enjoy the books leading up to this book.