HelEinir's Books

4.5 stars.
I thought I'd be ready for anything after the last book. I don't learn. Once again, I cried. But at least I handled it better than last time.

I feel I should review the first two books before this one, because for some reason I never got around to it. Oh well...

Short of it? I loved it.

The book condensed:

Ruby: I will do anything to help all of these smol, defenseless children, some of which are not children anymore and are actually older than me, and protect everyone with my life if it comes to it, I just need the perfect plan.
Liam: Darlin', I think I have an idea that—
Ruby: Shh, baby, these are adult matters. No need to worry your pretty, innocent, and naïve head over it.
Liam: I am older than you and I have some thoughts—
Cole: Liam, go play with your toys or you'll get time out.
Liam: ...
Ruby: *baby voice* Who's a good boy?

~~~ Yeaaah

Anyway...

The strongest thing about this book and the trilogy overall was the characters.

Liam, Ruby, Vida, Chubs, Zu, Jude, Nico, Cate, Cole, Sam, Alice, Senator Cruz, even freaking Clancy (who I wanted to choke every time he showed up). Major and minor characters, they all left an impression on me.

Liam was my absolute favorite, though. Characters like him are alway so refreshing. He's just so inherently good, caring, patient, brave. Sweet child. Why are you so pure?

It's hard to get mad at Ruby for being so fiercely protective of him. Not that I didn't still manage to. Which brings me to one of the reasons this book didn't get five stars from me.

Ruby, despite being a fantastic character, became very hard to tolerate for most of the book. She's perhaps the most overprotective character I've read in a while to the point that I realized she became, for a while, the female version of the sterotypical alpha males we see in other books. Condescending, controlling, thinking they know better than everyone, being hurtful and excusing their behavior because they're just doing "what's right". Reading everything through her POV helped nothing. She acted like a martyr and was very frequently over-dramatic. She kept information from anyone and everyone, and when the same was done to her she acted hurt and angry..acknowledging that she had done the same but AGAIN excusing her own decisions because SHE knows better. She acted like a big hypocrite (especially towards Liam), no matter how well intentioned her actions were.

It was hard to swallow that side of Ruby, seeing how she hurt those closest to her and herself because she couldn't trust anyone else to keep everyone safe. I had to stop reading several times because Ruby was making me so very angry with her Mom / Martyr act.

I think the book was unnecessary long and at the same time didn't explain enough. The first half , if not more, was excruciatingly slow and then BOOM, evrything was happening, I suddenly could not put it down, so much went on and we got to see only half of it (which is the downside of first-person narrative). I would have traded three chapters from the first half of the book for a more fleshed out ending.

I will miss these characters so much.But hey, there are still those novellas I have yet to read!! Yay!