"➳ double it and give it to the next person ☆

oh my god. my fucking god. no. fuck no. భయంకరమైన.

characters = mid. setting = mid. plot = mid. writing = mid. insta love = obviously. concept = mid. trope = what? development = mid. cover = mid. romance = mid. smut = made this even more mid. pacing = piss poor. my braincells = evaporated. the next book in this series = why do i keep doing this?

chiiiiiii. what the fuck, guys??? as always, this review is gonna be a hate review; take everything with a bucket of salt. i will be going through the whole book and there will be spoilers. full‼️SPOILERS‼️in this review. i will be going into the details of why this didn't work. my opinion is just that — MY opinion. if you love this book, i am VERY happy for you. please do not come into my comments are talk shit because i am not in the mood. this will only be a review of the book, NOT the author/fans of the series. read whatever you like. <3

for starters, i WILL be reading the next book in this series since it's a trilogy and i do need to know how this ends because this was the most nothingburger book i've read in a long time. the raving reviews have me going insane because what is everyone even talking about? i just do not understand what the huss and fuss is about. i tried. i tried so hard, but literally nothing about this stands out. it's not even well written...

this sequel essentially starts off exactly where the last book ended—odessa is left with evie and ransom is off doing god knows what. however, in this book we do get introduced to another POV, which is of a woman named cassian? or casino? caspien? girl, i don’t even fucking know lmao…but she is a huge part of this book and has a point of view pretty much every other chapter. and that is the only thing that i can say about this book because everything else falls extremely flat and makes absolutely no sense. this series is categorized as a “romantasy” but 1/2 of the couple is just completely missing for the first 50% of the book. why is ransom just nowhere to be found until the middle of this book? he’s the main character yet he has no point of view, no on page development, zero interactions with any character, and no compelling competent characteristics. why is he even here? the trees had more presence than him.

i already had severe issues with the first book in the series due to the fact that ransom was lying about his identity for almost 70% of that book. most of the actual romance development happened in the blink of an eye or off page because they have no fucking chemistry. i really thought that this book would slow it down and give us an explanation of this world, but absolutely nothing was happening from start to finish. somehow, we are in the exact same position as we were in book one except now—we have an entire new plot that nobody gives a flying fuck about. the stupid parallel timeline of that cassian girl and odessa did absolutely nothing for the story except drag the pacing 10-fold. spoiler alert, that casino lady and odessa are mother and daughter and it took over 60 chapters for this so-called revelation. like girl, i guessed this shit by page FIVE. page fucking five. oh my god.

unsure how this book ended up being even more stagnant and mundane than the first one, but color me surprised…because it did. i never thought that was possible, but here we are. i’m not sure who allowed the author to unnecessarily add an entire new POV in book two of a trilogy, but they need to be fired. it's very unclear what devney was trying to do with this story because by the end of this book, i am still utterly confused on what is going on and what the objective is. people who keep raving about this either do not read any fantasy, or they’re getting paid and i will not take any other answer. coming from someone who reads a lot of high fantasy—explaining an excessive amount of zilch by info dumping useless shit that nobody asked for is not good world building. this is honestly reading like a novel from the 1800s. because why are these people describing trees and grass and nature for 500 pages? most of this was just poorly written internal monologue that went on for chapters. there’s no political intrigue, there's no magic system, and there is no reason that any of these people should even exist. it's never explained.

odessa, ultimately does not grow or learn or evolved throughout this book. she’s in the same loophole of nothingness; except this time the so-called love of her life is nowhere to be found. odessa is essentially playing babysitter with somebody else’s kid for the first 50% of this book and when ransom does come back, it’s just a bunch of bullshit forced tension. where is the chemistry? can you at least try to make him hot? please.

“i love you.” 🫤
“i know you do.” 💀
“i love him.” 😐
“he won’t say it back but i know he does.” 💀
“fuck me.” 😑
“i will fuck that smart mouth of yours.” 💀

i mean, what the literal fuck am i even reading? this would be attractive if they actually had any chemistry or any growth, but even in book one, they barely spent any time together. now we book two, and they STILL spend no time together so why the fuck are they even in love? how did they even have the chance to fall in love when they don’t even know shit about each other? the entire book is just odessa being stupid and ransom controlling everything she does by trying to act like he’s her protective husband. it’s reading like a soap opera telenovela. how is this fantasy? where is the romance? where is the plot? what are they doing? why are they doing it? why the fuck did i pick this up? questions questions.

now, we have the stupid mother’s POV and shocker, hers is the exact same thing as odessa except she has her own man who is controlling her life and deceiving her of crucial information that would be salient for the plot. ultimately, this bullshit ends up going nowhere because she literally dies randomly at the end and i’m pretty sure this is the reason that everybody was crying...but when this all ended up going down, i was laughing so hard because i don’t give a flying fuck about this bitch. there’s literally no romance here for me to care about. i never believed their love so why would i care if they live or die? in fact, i’m kind of happy they’re gone because now i don’t have to read about these fools ever again. i don’t even remember either of their names and that’s embarrassing for everybody involved. these characters are so lifeless they are giving me a run for my money. useless meets useless.

one of the biggest mistakes that devney decided to do was to create this weird dual timeline and try to make this “reveal” the largest driving factor of the book. not only was the twist painfully obvious from the very beginning, but it genuinely makes no sense once both of the stories start to weave together. mind you, this fuckery took over 60 chapters. there’s only 66 chapters in the book…it’s like we went four steps forward and four hundred steps backwards. instead of taking the very lukewarm world building elements from the first book in expanding on that—this book watered that down completely and decided to go for complete filler. there’s not really much of an impact this story had on the characters, nor did it have any impact on me as a reader. there were several points where i was struggling to even keep reading, but somehow, i was able to finish this because the audiobook was the only good element of this foolishness. this isn't your traditional bad storyline, it's just so fucking dry.

lastly, the narrative structure in this book is all over the place and ultimately this is a direct reflection of the author and her experience with the genre. there are a lot of romance authors that are trying to slowly move their way into fantasy and i’m sorry to tell you, it is not working. fantasy authors spend years before their debut, researching their lore and spending a long time crafting their work before it gets published. however, nowadays, it’s very common for romance authors to take a trope that they’re used to writing about and then create a bunch of magical creatures and say, “hey, this is hot”. it’s very pitifully obvious that devney cannot write fantasy and has no experience with big worlds and magic systems. i would not mind this much if the first book was decent—but the foundation of this series has never been crystal clear. nothing about this world is adequately done. to this day, i am not understanding why people were screaming and crying and throwing up over this book because it is honestly one of the worst things i’ve ever read. this applies for the first book as well. mid meets mid.

these characters aren't even attractive enough to be doing allat.

negative stars."