Stars: 2 out of 5
This was a promising start, and I enjoyed the first three-quarters of the book, but it went downhill after that for a few reasons.
I think first and foremost, at least for me, is that I grew to despise the protagonist. She was mildly irritating at first, but I chalked it off to her upbringing and a recent traumatic experience she went through. The longer I read though, the more I understood that no, this was just how Ella truly was.
She is extremely selfish, and she is very passive-aggressive when she wants others to do something for her, which is… all the time. She never pauses to think about the consequences of her actions to herself or anyone else she drags into the messes she creates. And, as I said, she gets passive-aggressive when they try to say no, or just brushes off their concerns like they are not important or valid. Because they aren’t to her, either important or valid, because nothing is more important to Ella than Ella.
Case in point, when Damien, a guy who she met barely a few days ago, tells her that he is not comfortable breaking into a highly fortified compound on a pretend inspection because he doesn’t want word of this to get to his very influential family, she just… brushes this off? And the weird part is that he still goes with her. Why? Why is she portrayed as this special snowflake that all men (even gay men) fall over themselves to help and coddle?
She also suffers from the TSTL (too stupid to live) syndrome, because she thinks with her hormones, not her brain. Like the decision to keep the reaper’s soul, even though it’s devouring her, just because she saw a vision of someone who might or might not have been her missing brother. Now she is persuaded that this soul is the only way she’ll find him. Erm, why? Did she exhaust any other means of searching for him? Because it doesn’t look to me like she tried all that hard. She even flat-out refused help from a licensed private investigator. Really?
Or deciding to infiltrate a secure compound to “liberate” a gargoyle with a human stuck in it. All this with only 8 people, none of which are aware that she is planning a kidnapping instead of a simple inspection to make sure the boy is still alive. And the worst part is, there are no consequences for any of that. Ella does the most stupid and hair-brained things and the author just rewards her for this.
In the end, I didn’t care about whether Ella and co freed Nathan from his stone prison, or whether she would survive the reaper’s soul. In fact, I was rather rooting for the reaper to win her over, so that I didn’t have to read about her anymore. Needless to say, I won’t continue with this series.