⭐⭐

Listened to via Audiobook, free from Kindle Unlimited.

Alright, so I gave myself some time to sit on this book and this review. Where to start?

The writing is very dry. While listening to it I often compared it to chewing on cardboard. The descriptions of objects and places was... More or less a word salad, but effort was made. The interactions between people, though?

"I said."
"He said."
"He smirked."
"He cocked his head."
"I gasped."

There was an extreme overusaged of the above phrases, and less descriptors of actions and emotions. There was also heavy repetition through sentences and paragraphs, and this leads me to believe the author should broaden her knowledge on different words to use, or invest in a thesaurus. Part of me is convinced that there was no editor involved in the publishing of this book, or AI was used to proof read. No, this is not me accusing an author of using AI, this is me saying the outcome of whatever editing (if any) was akin to what I expect AI to produce.

The plot was a little messy in the first book, and it started to get a little messy here, but then it got on track, and then everything (literally) exploded and went off the rails. I'm glad there was more action in this book.

Aileen still pisses me off. Honestly, just give me a book about Tansy at this point bc she's more interesting.

Aileen's new ability is cool and all, but it's a little OP imo. More importantly, I think it's a sort of cop-out at times, or could have been used in situations it wasn't. And I also don't forgive the fact that we just suddenly forgot about her master martial arts skills she had in the first book-- why was none of that used?? Why not use those in conjunction with the new ability? Tbh I thought that sparring scene with Logan in the first book was incredibly out of place considering those martial arts skills are used one other time (and that's it), and it feels even more so now that I've read the second book.

Atalon was.... Eh, I actually liked him better than Aileen. His character was, imo, written pretty well, if pretty basic as well. Right from the start you have a good idea of what he wants, and I'm glad the book doesn't mask his intentions much. To the reader, you can tell from the start that he's got eyes for Aileen, and his end goal is her in some way, so you're not totally caught off guard with him.

Over all, I enjoyed this book about the same as the first book in ways of story and plot, but way less in the writing aspect. I was able to get through this easily enough as an Audiobook, but I think if I had actually read this I would have DNF'd it long ago.