I wanted to love this book so bad it physically hurt that I didn't. Sure I liked it, but there were enough things that actively bothered me throughout the book that I almost DNF'd it a couple of times. Sometimes I would be very invested and other times it felt like things were dragging in a way that made me unmotivated to finish it. I'm very happy I didn't as the last 50-60 pages (reading on my phone) really saved it for me and made me interested to see where the story goes. With that being said I have a lot of things I need to talk about. I'm going to do this in sections so I can organize my thoughts a bit better. 

First, let's talk about our main cast Echo and Adam. Ugh. That's what comes to mind when I think of them. Not because they were written poorly (although I have some major gripes I'll be talking about), but because of their general lack of emotional intelligence that really got in the way of my enjoyment of their story together as a whole. 

Echo: Is said to be a strong person who has been hardened by their experiences growing up. Is the strong and hardened in the room with us? For a "strong" character as she is illustrated numerous times she sure did cry a lot. Now I get it, I can cry at the littlest things and Echo was going through a lot. But if you're going to establish that this character is good at separating themselves from their emotions and is very hardened by their situation then you have to show me, you can't just tell me because now I don't believe you. I want to watch her actively bury her emotions and feelings of helplessness as each new thing comes up. I want to watch her shut down time and time again until she physically can't anymore and she finally breaks down and everything comes out against her will. I want to see that subsequent break affect Adam and it is a catalyst to changing the foundations of their relationship and how they interact with one another. There was none of that. In the end, I did love watching her come into her powers and figure out the position she wanted to have in life and despite the fact I was lowkey rooting for them to not get back together, it was nice to see her forgive him at a more natural pace. She made him grovel which was truly the only way I would have accepted the relationship continuing. 

Adam: Insecure man taking it out on his partner and doesn't actively work towards fixing the issues he's aware he has until it's essentially too late. Man meets the consequences of his actions. His inner monologue would say one thing and the way he would treat her and speak to her didn't even feel like him deflecting his emotions in a way that made sense. I don't think I saw a real instance of him treating his people with a once of respect and several times I found myself questioning why they were even loyal to him beyond his station as berserker. There was literally a moment where he got irritated at one of his 6 (which is what his main circle is called) for speaking in their accent because they were from another city. Very much giving "You have to speak English if you're in America/Canada," like huh?? 🤨 I think one of my major issues with him was that it took him so long to realize what he had done and to get to his whole revelation. It was so abrupt and he had a complete 180 switch that his admission of wrongdoing, even though he did change in the end, felt a bit insubstantial. I wanted a more natural progression of him understanding the full scope of his actions and insecurities, something we saw happen and experienced with him as opposed to him just all of a sudden seeing the error of his ways. Despite this, I took a lot of joy in his grovel period and I loved the change from him wanting to claim her to wanting to be claimed by her and proudly proclaiming and showing it. 

I also had some issues with them collectively. Why were they so clueless about things? Please correct me if I'm wrong and I just missed something but some things were portrayed as common knowledge that they were just unaware of and it made no sense. In this world, everyone starts as a beta and while it's not guaranteed and kind of unlikely, anyone can end up being an alpha or omega. With that being the case you'd think things like an omegas heat would be common fucking knowledge but for some reason, Echo just didn't know about it. A huge part of her character is the fact that she hates her omega status because of the treatment omegas receive and what it implies for her but she doesn't even know what she's fighting against and it took me out of connecting to her struggle. 

Similarly, why the fuck did Adam not know that you had to be invited to bond with an omega. I can understand him not getting that kind of education as a child growing up chained and tortured but at this point in the story he has been the leader of Dark City for a decent amount of time, enough time for him to find out this information especially as it seems like he's been thinking about the omega from the fates vision for a long ass time. Everyone in his crew knew this information and was shocked he didn't. I was shocked he didn't. I was disappointed that this was the reason they didn't bond properly because it just felt so predictable I was hoping for something more. 

As a whole, I really enjoyed the world and premise and I'm excited to see where the story goes. I'm nervous about having a story about Yaros as I don't know how much misogynistic language I can take but I also have a lot of faith that the book is going to be partly about his views changing which I'm eager to see play out.