Goodreads Summary:
Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life—working hard all day and partying all night—until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She’ll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.
Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose—to assassinate his boss’s enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he’s offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.
As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City’s underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion—one that could set them both free, if they’d only let it.
My Review:
Honestly, I loved this book. The biggest disappointment of it all was that I ordered it from Barnes and Noble prior to the release date and it came on the next Saturday instead of Tuesday. However, the book itself was great. The foreshadowing and character development was spot on, and I loved Bryce more than life. I laughed, I cried, and I can’t wait for the sequel. My one reservation was that Sarah J. Maas is an immensely talented writer, but she has a habit of reusing characters. Bryce was essentially Celaena Sardothien with a different body type and I still can’t really find a trait of Hunt, the love interest, that doesn’t really belong to either Rowan Whitethorn or Rhysand.
I definitely have to acknowledge that Sarah does barely anything to explicitly promote diversity in her writing which I can’t excuse at all. Her books are captivating, but not enough so to forgive that.
Despite the somewhat unoriginal characters, I did love this book. It was new adult, but I think the graphic violence would be more of an issue than anything else. I would still recommend this to older teens and adults who love fantasy, and definitely those who enjoyed A Court of Thorns and Roses and/or Throne of Glass.
Overall, I would give this book…
⭐⭐⭐/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.
The Fiction Feature 