This actually pains me to write because I really liked Faebound and was so excited to explore more on the lore, the worldbuilding, the whimsy, the political intrigue. Instead Saara El-Arifi seemed to have decided that since she briefly explained all of this before in book one, none of it needs repeating or expanding.

Everything about this book is so surface level. The emotions, the location descriptions, even the attempts to foreshadow are so surface level that I predicted the ending of the book on page 96 of 322.

It's so upsetting because I wanted to love this book. I wanted to see more of this series. I wanted to explore the existing characters but we don't get to explore really any of it. It's almost like the characters get Flander-ized by the author herself. Furi is just the hot-headed leader with a quickness to anger and nothing deeper than that. Yeeran is just a naive yet deeply loyal pawn. Lettle is just a petulant early-teen coded elf. There is no depth, or at least we no longer get to see any depth because this was already covered in book one.

I don't know just overall I'm so upset at how bad it was. Faebound wasn't phenomenal by any means, but it was at least so much fun to read. Cursebound was just...bad. On all counts.