I wanted to love this, and I really think I put in a decent effort to, but I think there were just too many pieces that I couldn't connect to that it really really hindered me over all. 

I hate, haaaated the plot point of Teryn's body being taken over. I understand that it pretty much had to be, because we needed little lady that was stuck in the crystal with him to just information dump for 200 (exaggeration,but also not really) pages and there was no other way to make that possible, but I still hated it. 

I hated the teardown of Cora's character. She got some sweet powers, and that was great, but she also developed these super dark thoughts. Once she “accepted” that side of her, I was banking on her turning some kind of dark, and I was ready and prepared for it. But literally nothing happened. She just decided she NEEDED to be queen of Lela (because being queen of just one kingdom wasn't good enough) and no one else could, and that was THAT. 

Also. I haven't liked Mareleu's character since she was introduced in book one. I'm about to walk into her Novella (for reasons unknown) even though I can't stand her as a character. And yeah, she had her whole redemption arc in this one, but too much was done and said to make me absolutely hate her through the rest of the series for the author to turn around in the last half of the third book and be like, wait! You should love her now, she's actually the hero. Mmmmm.  Nope. No thanks. 

This book felt like a whole new everything to me in this one. Book one was amazing, and I loved every second. Book 2 and 3 felt like they were written about different characters.