Barbarian's Hope

I have been waiting for this one. It did not disappoint. This is a beautiful tearjerker of a story. It is truly heart warming to read how not only two hearts are being mended but some unresolved issues are also being addressed. This had me sobbing. I loved that we got to look at a very different perspective than we have before. I love the characters that the author creates. Each new plot is beautiful in its own right but adds so much to the series arch.

4 stars — This book was more emotional than I was expecting…which, it really shouldn’t have surprised me given Asha and Hemalo’s history, but still…I definitely cried for them. Asha was an interesting character that I wasn’t expecting to like, b/c, well, she’s kind of a witch with a b. And I mean that outside of how she dealt with her grief. But she was just this fiery personality who was used to having attention, and on the heels of her own personal tragedy, her entire tribe changes. I can imagine it would be hard and a struggle. It was still hard to watch her purposely hurt Hemalo to protect herself though. Despite that, I did feel for her, and I did see her good qualities. And once they both got over themselves and stopped sabotaging their chances, I liked the way they balanced one another. I feel like Hemalo’s part of the story was a bit smaller. He was dealing with his own grief, and he was making bone-headed decisions, but we got to see a lot more of Asha’s journey than his. Still, I appreciated how we got to see that different people have different ways of grieving. And I appreciated the way his calm nature balanced out Asha. They were a complicated couple. Probably a bit too volatile to be a favourite of mine, but I still cheered for them when they finally started making progress. I wanted that epilogue for them, SO BADLY. It was so worth it. I wasn’t expecting Claire to have an equal share of the story. It was weird, yet interesting. I loved that her friendship with Asha was so genuine and necessary. I loved what she brought to the tribe with the holidays. I did find her hangups on Bek to be a bit too much, but I understood the underlying concern. I enjoyed a peek at her and Erevan’s relationship. So yeah. I think I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did, b/c I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I’m curious to see where the series will go from here.

Sad beautiful book, but I enjoyed listening book.