Warning: Some reviews contain minor spoilers, but I keep the best parts vague. Check out my Reading Ranting page for more reviews and thoughts on reading.
You can never tell if you’re going to devour a book or if the book is going to devour you. For me, this book falls into the latter. It just hooked me from page 1 and made me love everything about it all the way through.
What I liked…
EVERYTHING! But I’ll be specific.
- I love the unusual relationship between Callie and Des. It’s a friends to lovers and enemies to lovers combo. They were once friends, but for… reasons, they didn’t see each other for 7 years, and Callie is pissed when Des drops himself back into her life. Love the complexity.
- I love the magic. It’s fun but uncomplicated.
- Wings 🥰❤😊 I can’t tell you how much I love fictional characters with wings. I’ve written many.
- The Bargainer is… not dark haired and dark eyed like so many morally grey characters. But he’s got his lovely darkness to him.
- I love how Callie sees a unique side to this supposedly dark character from the beginning. I like a rumoured bad character proving himself, but this take is refreshing. She gets to know him as a friend at first rather than being forced into a situation with him. That comes later, but since Des is also the infamous Bargainer, Callie owes him for past favours. So she got herself into the situation by choice.
- I absolutely love the flashbacks to when she first met him, so we get a full picture without boring info dumps. So nicely done, Laura.
- The love scenes are my kind of style. Not unnecessarily explicit but not too delicate and vague either. A wonderful balance of emotional and physical.
- Sirens. Like winged characters, love sirens and love reading and writing about them.
- This is a mostly character-driven plot, but it has bigger things going on which make it an all-round great plot and story.
What I didn’t like…
- I was conflicted over how Des behaved with Callie sometimes when she was 16. I can adapt my brain to fantasy worlds, and he mostly kept some distance between them and stuck to friendly stuff, but it didn’t sit right that an ancient fae king was hanging out with a teenager. We find out more later, but still… super inappropriate.
- I’m being completely picky here, but the writing had some technical issues that go against the grain for me. Lots of filtering, incorrect use of lay/lie, and too many begin/began to… It let the book down in my opinion. But like I said, I was being picky with this.
Despite the occasional wording issue, I adored this book from start to finish. It doesn’t happen very often that I fall in love with a book or series, so when it happens, I can’t help but rave bout it.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy world meets real world and characters who have fun magic.
Love Fantasy Novels 