Nicole H
So after an initial slow/overly descriptive beginning, this book was really good! Most days I didn’t want to put it down. I’m giving it 4 out of 5 stars. I really enjoyed the audiobook on this one; the narrators were great. If this is your first read, you might want to read the physical copy first. There’s a guessing game of who is who, and the narrators ruined the surprise reveal before most people would have found out. I didn’t mind much since I was right, but it still kind of sucked. Lia was a pretty great character, although some of the things she did kind of made me shake my head at her. She’s smart in some instances, but then throws her brains out the window sometimes too. Like if I was running for my life, I’d be a little more careful about things I said, did, etc. Now onto the boys. I really loved Rafe’s character. There was just something about him that drew me in. That being said, I also enjoyed Kaden a lot too. But if I had to chose, I’d chose Rafe in this instance. He’s definitely going on my book boyfriend list. For secondary characters, I adored Walther, Pauline, and the ladies we got to know in Terravin. The friendships in this book were fantastically written, so major props for that. The last half of the book was good, leaving me on the edge of my seat, wanting to know what would happen. And that ending…I want to know ASAP what’s next for our group. I can’t believe I waited this long to read this series, but I intend to catch up on the other books in the next couple of months with the fantastic readalong group. There was one part that had me actually tearing up, but no spoilers as to what happened. The poems and passages at the beginning of some of the chapters were confusing, plus a few other things throughout the book kind of lost me. I know we’ll learn more as the series continues, but I don’t really like being out of the loop and confused. Overall, a solid start to this series!