This was... fine.

I liked the protagonist, and her love interest definitely had his cute moments, but unfortunately, a lot of the book's humor did absolutely nothing for me.

The shenanigans were just too much. Instead of making me laugh, a lot of them made me cringe. Her mom and aunt in particular were responsible for what felt like an endless stream of chaotic scenes that had me sighing, rolling my eyes, and experiencing an impressive amount of secondhand embarrassment.

It was all just a little too insane and a little too unserious for my taste.

The romance was also a bit cluttered and oddly paced, but there were definitely moments where I smiled. I liked them together enough to enjoy those little moments, even if I never became particularly invested in the relationship.

Overall, it was a fun enough read for an evening when I wanted something light and ridiculous. Just maybe not that ridiculous.

Well.

I actually liked this more than the first one.

Not a lot more, obviously. Let's not get carried away. But an improvement is an improvement.

After giving the first book one star, I almost DNF'd this series into oblivion. But I cannot, for the life of me, leave a duology unfinished. In my brain, a duology is just one book that someone arbitrarily chopped in half, so unfortunately I had to know how it ended.

And now that I've finished both... I think my opinion of the duology as a whole has improved slightly.

Because there are actually good bones here.

The problem is that they're still mostly just bones.

This book, like the first one, feels unfinished. It desperately needs editing, restructuring, and probably someone to sit down with the plot and ask, "Okay, but what are we actually doing here?" The story is there, technically, but it barely has a pulse. The flow is awkward, the emotional payoff is hanging on by a thread, and so much of the book reads more like an outline than a finished novel.

And I think that's what frustrates me most: I can see the potential.

There is a world here. The worldbuilding feels more developed in this book, and the war and political conflict were interesting enough to keep me turning the pages. Evelyn and Caleb's bond is actually very sweet once we get there, even if I have absolutely no idea how we got there considering the absolute disaster their relationship was in the first book. Adam and Bells also had so much potential that I wish had been explored more.

Even the writing isn't bad in isolation. There are individual scenes that are perfectly fine. The problem is that everything around those scenes feels underdeveloped.

It reads like the first draft of a first draft. Like someone had all the ideas and wrote them down before figuring out how those ideas should actually become a story.

And the ending...

It doesn't really end.

It just kind of fades away.

There is no big emotional climax, no satisfying payoff, no "THE END" feeling. The story just sort of exhales and disappears. After everything the characters went through, I wanted something that actually landed.

So yes, two stars.

Because I genuinely think there is something underneath all of this mess that could have been good. There are ideas worth salvaging, characters worth developing, and a world that could've supported a much stronger story.

Unfortunately, we got the bones. I wanted the tendons, the flesh, the blood, ya know?