Did all the people who gave this more than 3 stars read the same book? Excuse me, SLOG through the same book. It took me almost 8 weeks to finish this. I read 28 other books because I kept putting this down. I almost gave up and DNF so many times.
My feelings for almost every character I had come to like turned meh or into outright hate. Except for Lucien because he was lucky enough to not even be present through like 3/4 of the book. And the Archeron sisters have been annoying in all 3 books so nothing new there.
Other popular 1 and 2 star reviews sum up my disgust and frustration so I can just be done.
If I decide to be forgiving enough to pick up the 4th book and Nesta isn't given an immediate attitude adjustment though I will nope right on outta there.
Contains spoilers
Alana suffers from an acute case of dumb bitchitis, which clearly infected me because there's no other reason for me to have not DNF this all the times I considered it.
My Turn has a choose-your-own-ending option: one with a HEA and one without. The only reason I finished this was to see what happened to Jayce. I would accept 1 of 2 outcomes for this murdering rapist. He would either need to end up dead or in prison for consecutive life sentences. Neither of those things happened, so in my opinion there was definitely no happy ending.
I don't consider this dark romance; just dark. This is a straight horror novel. There's no morally grey. No person in their right mind could ever like Jayce, including readers. This character had a straight coal black heart and moral code. Terrorizing, raping, and branding the female lead is never romantic.
I honestly seriously debated if I should keep reading this a few times throughout the first part. I so almost quit. I was frustrated. Some things just didn't make sense. The author seemed to contradict his own writing, didn't explain things as well as I would have liked, or seemed to write things just because. But I pushed through. I told myself that maybe the world building just took time to fully grasp. Maybe it would get better. Thank fuck, it did!
Once I hit the second section I pretty much didn't put this down until I was done. I ate while reading. I fed my dogs with one hand because I was holding my kindle. This isn't a perfect book, but it'll keep you reading as it's consistently well paced.
Obvious influences and references I picked up on:
- Greek and Roman mythology to the max
- Harry Potter (People in houses based on personality and intelligence? Do you need the sorting hat?)
- Lord of the Flies (But also with girls.)
- Ender's Game (There's an actual reference to Wiggin by name.)
- Divergent (Factions, but even more caste system like.)
- Battle Royale and Hunger Games (Goal isn't to kill to win, but there aren't rules against killing to win.)