This has an interesting concept—a rift to the underworld has opened and allowed demons to come through, along with other creatures, and the mafia-style organization of demons preys on humans while “hunters,” born with demon-hunting ability, try to stop them.

Unfortunately, I felt like it bit off more than it could chew when it came to the world, and most of the elements felt surface level and not particularly well explained. I was left with a lot of questions, despite random pauses for characters to info dump, and various pieces just didn’t make sense to me taken together. Plotwise, most of the big twists/reveals were either surprising because they were not hinted at at all, or super obvious because of the many, many, many hints, without many finding a nice balance in between of making sense without being obvious.

The romance is where I think this will find its fans. If you love romantasy and read primarily the most popular romantasy books, I think you’ll find this to be an enjoyable and comfortable read that plays well into some of the favorite tropes. We’ve got the infinitely older MMC who is a literal demon, forbidden romance because he’s her professor 🙃, enemies to lovers (sort of, she just hates demons), knife to the throat, protective, etc. All the little tropey moments that make books like Fourth Wing etc popular are here too, ready for you to relive them again and again.

Not as strong as the first entry in the duology, but still a satisfying resolution. We pick up immediately where things left off, exploring the motivation of our villain and some of the connections between the main characters. I particularly enjoyed Haven’s development and exploration, though Teo & Phoenix are also a favorite.

I do feel like the author wasn’t quite sure how to tie together the arc from the previous book, where the villain is of course making horrific choices but definitely for the right reason, to the evolution in the second book where the strategy felt more ??? and less connected with the overall messaging of the story. The extended fight scenes were not my favorite.

Still a gorgeous and nuanced look at culture and belonging, with characters I really wanted to spend time with. h

A fun concept—two interconnected novellas, each featuring a sister and with a few crossovers in the timeline of the plot but primarily separate. I actually wish the two had switched orders. I understand that would spoil the ending for the second novella, but I felt like the first would have been better with more backstory (which was introduced in the second).

The first is a very fast resolution, as we have a MMC who has been in love with the FMC forever and just need the two to decide to be together. The second had a little more development, with more on-page falling in love. Both were sweet, not too deep giving the shortened timeline, but fun.

A nice easy quick read.

I wanted to enjoy this more than I did.

At first, it felt like the majority of the plot centered around Darling’s bipolar disorder. It was all about her shame, her missing her medication, her negative self talk. I think that’s an interesting angle to take, and not something that I expected to be so front and center. However, it felt like that plot more or less disappeared in the last 15-20%? I understand that she was better able to manage her symptoms but it felt like it just stopped altogether.

I also wish we had more information about the whole struggle between ordinary ever afters vs happily ever afters. It felt like we were building towards teaching that people should reach for happily ever after evers but like, isn’t the entire balance of their world dependent on all options?

Ultimately, I think I just wanted more investment into why the two main characters are meant to be together. It felt great that they finally understood one another and I loved the idea of them being friends/working together but there was so much else going on that it felt like we glossed over a lot of the details.

A book with some great concepts but ultimately a little too heavy handed in messaging and bogged down in unnecessary repetition.

The idea of two time travelers—one going forward in time, one going backward—who need to communicate with one another to “fix” the timeline and solve climate disaster is ultimately a really interesting one. I thought the ancient greek sections were particularly interesting. However, a lot of the future drama with the robots just felt superfluous to me, like it was a distraction from the literal end of the world and didn’t have the emotional impact I was hoping for. I also found the third timeline to seem to exist almost entirely as info dumping/lecturing about climate change, which… okay, but not enjoyable. I also felt like some of the scientific stuff would have been better off not going into it rather than the sort of half explanations. I still don’t really get the overall impact of the project or what was changed in the past timeline.

Overall this felt like a clever concept that did not trust its reader to come to the right conclusions and fell short of what could have been a really impactful book. I was hoping for something more like The Space Between Worlds.