A Soul to Guide

loved the premise & beginning so much. it was genuinely so promising, and i was like dayum, this is gonna be my favourite book of the series! merikh was a 10/10 character, and his viciousness to get what he wanted was just chefs kiss.

my fav part of the book was when rae found out he wasn't what he seemed, and he did that whole malicious chuckle thing. wow. i was like at the edge of my seat, because how tf would these two fall in love.

even the whole build up to go to the temple was nice, and it made me understand and appreciate the characters a lot.

after the whole village/temple visit thing, the book kinda fell flat for me. rae, supposedly being super genius mad scientist, just didn't seem to have a lot of power, but i was like oh maybe she's just not familiar w earth. but when they went back to the elvish realm, she was still treated like a child?? like no one listened to her, or told her anything of importance. and i genuinely just felt bad for merikh, because she had built up the realm so much in his head, but the people there were kinda stinky too yk.

i was disappointed w the end so so much. i waNTED desperately for their to be a confrontation w jazbez and rae, and i really wanted merikh & jazbez's friendship & bond to be explored. i lOved the whole elder sibling trauma stuff too! there was just so mUCH potential. wouldn't have minded this book being even longer. but nah, the ending felt rushed. rae, my girl, disappointed me with not defending merikh strongly enough, not even trying to help bring merikh's family to the elvish realm, or even trying to help the humans out. she just became this wishy washy, self righteous character who felt so much for the people, but really did fuckall to help anyone who was not her species. and merikh kind of just became this losery whipped dude. i mean i love those characters too, bUT merikh was just so much more interesting earlier. couldn't he have kept a lil bit of his personality