Jazmin Villagra

Nothing to add other than: I want more! this was such a delightful follow-up to Legends & Lattes. A lot of Viv's character comes alive and makes sense in a way that does not override what's written in L&L, but actually complements it all in a full-circle-kinda thing. Why am I mentioning this, as obvious as it seems? well... because this is a particularly big issue when it comes to series, where authors let slip details that make their previous depiction of their characters and the world they live in almost unrecognizable from their previous releases. Travis Baldree managed to beat the odds in this regard and gave us so much more to not only hang on to but to enrich the world we've built in our minds with his work in a way that takes from just a cozy fantasy imagination to a proper fantastic adventure, with loads of branches to still be explored, which I just can't wait to read about :)

[Spoilers ahead]
I mean... where do I start?
In the first book, the protagonist was an early 20s woman who's been through A LOTTT in life and is actually making decisions to get out of her awful situation, sometimes good and sometimes really bad decisions, but is actually taking matters into her own hands and using a little bit of brain power.

In this book however... What happened? Did she get a brain transplant that we don't know about? All she has to say for herself throughout 2/3 of the book is “I don't want my toy boyfriend to find out I was arrested and that I killed people because he will leave me, but he doesn't know me, but he loves me, but I don't know if I love him, but it's gonna be lame to be without him, but lame to be with him too, ugh I miss my old hot Italian mob boyfriend who left to take care of his mom but UGH SO UNFAIR THAT HE LEFT MEEEE WAAAAA”
None of the things happening in the Millie plot are making any sense even after getting a bit of hindsight (mind you, like 3 paragraphs) on what happened after the last book. I'm starting to think it was intentionally written to make us think that because she was building her life back from scratch, she got over her traumas like magic, and that made her... Almost stupid... Like her life experiences didn't make her a smart person who makes her own choices or even a fool who makes bad choices all the time, but instead she is a doll being led by what she thinks the men in her life want from her? She reverted to a teenager because you can't give us more about her past so you made her into a girl again? Is that supposed to be a trauma response? There should have been a bit of backstory to justify this whole ordeal.

If the point in this book was to write the story from a different perspective to make it clear that Millie's naivety (however you write this) is her weak point and that she'll always be a killer, why wait until the last 50 pages to give us the other person's perspective? By chapter 3 we already knew what was gonna happen, how she was being played yet again and how she was gonna orchestrate a really stupid plan and go back to the hot Italian baddie.

I'll give it 2 stars just because it had a plot twist, which many books in this category fail to deliver quite frequently. Whether it's a good one or not is... well, up to you, I can't with good confidence recommend this to other readers though.