After making it through over 800 pages with no substance, I’m getting annoyed at myself for wasting my own time. So many frustrating components; the short chapters, forced drama over miscommunication, and overly repetitive conversations. And we already had so many unexplained elements (which I’m now realising is a crutch to allow Wolff to do whatever she wants with the story), but we’re going to start bringing souls into this nonsense? The worldbuilding in this series is turning into a choose-your-own-adventure writing style with no established rules, which is annoying rather than freeing.

Wolff repeatedly goes out of her way to show Hudson is a better mate for Grace than Jaxon ever was, but we still end up dealing with this bullshit love triangle every other chapter (which in this case is every 5-10 pages). I understand this is the teenage drama you expect, but since now we’re talking souls and mates and paranormal crap, instead of the 300 pages which would make this manageable, we have to deal with this nonsense for almost 900 pages. I’m starting to question whether anyone edits these books; there must be a story underneath all this hyperbolic bullshit that would be worth reading. We’re only three books in, but it already feels like a soap opera that’s been on the air for so long the plot twists are getting repetitive, and the actors are all playing their own evil twins.

This whole setup is just to get Jaxon to accept (or realise) his sexuality, right? The only way to salvage this wreck is for Jaxon to admit he’s at least bi and in love with Flint. Even if this happens, it’s still so dumb – I’m not sure how Wolff could turn unnecessary guilt, unrequited love, death, and bullshit into necessary events because the prince of the vampires is in denial about his sexuality. Stop pining over some superficial gargoyle who fell in love with you in a week (not sure why you’re surprised when she moved on so quickly) and maybe let your brother be happy since you took his actions at face value and murdered him rather than taking the time to figure out what he was trying to do. I reckon you probably owe him this one at the very least.

This series started as a fun, trashy read, but the plot choices in these books are starting to make this more annoying and less worth the time it takes to read them.