*3.5*

I enjoyed the book, the case, the characters. But I have to say the FMC took a hard turn into TSTL at the end that was off-putting enough that I almost gave this 3 stars.

Moving on to book 2. There are some interesting overall mysteries here that I feel driven to unravel, which is great. But my TSTL tolerance is low, so one more bit of bullshit on that level and I'll probably bail.

I enjoyed it, but I have to give it 3 stars because I had a really hard time sticking with it for the first half.

Not only is Hallie's (FMC) life lonely and depressing, but also we are treated to everyone abusing her. And she just takes it, to infinity.

The ruling class of this world are called the

hochlen and they are basically enhanced humans, as best I can tell. Look human, but are stronger, faster, and super wealthy elite. And to sum up things, they're basically Nazis. They are utterly convinced of their own superiority, and uniformly believe normal humans are scum. They savagely beat, torture, murder at their whim. And this is true for every single one we meet in this book. Yes, I'm including the douchebag that I assume is the love interest - I threw up in my mouth a little at the thought, frankly - because even though he didn't lay a hand on the FMC, he had no problem standing there while others beat her, broke her cheekbone by deliberately slamming her face into the edge of a table, clubbed her with a shock stick, left her tied up in a moving vehicle so she's slammed from wall to wall as they drive around the city (yes, the same way cops murdered George Floyd, so if you didn't want us to think all hochlen are fascist pigs, including Girard, that was a poor choice), drugged her for interrogation (a drug that left her screaming in pain as it went through her system, so it's a two for one torture + truth serum, perfect for fascist monsters), and etc.

I want to read onward, and I will, but I don't know that this series is going to work for me. Frankly, I am tired of seeing Hallie walked all over. I want her to get an Uzi and mow down every cop and hochlen she sees. I want her to literally cleanse this city with fire.

And I know it won't happen.

I love this author. But something I have struggled with in every series is how much the FMC is willing to light herself on fire to keep other people warm. People who don't deserve her help. She had to help in this book because it was about clearing her name, but by all rights, she should hate every motherfucker that was in this book except Rosalia and the witches. She should spit on them if they approach her for help again (or better yet, Uzi).

We live in a world that has conclusively proven that turning the other cheek and offering kindness to people who hate you - who would happily kill you (something more than a few people in this book wanted to do) - gets you a world with people like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen in charge. People with no decency, who believe you are subhuman and their minds cannot be changed. And I'm fucking tired of it. I'm tired of amazing female characters getting horribly beaten down by the world of their series, and getting back up to offer a helping hand to their abusers.

Nah, man. It's time to burn this shit down. Start with the mom who has the gall to disown her for...checks notes...getting attacked as a child (but still extorts her for protection money every month. No, I'm not kidding. Literally every character in this book is an absolute piece of shit, except for Hallie, Rosalie, and Hallie's witch friends). And end with the Nazi-hochlen up on their shining high hills. I'll bring the marshmallows.

So, we're having a crazy wind event here in LA, which resulted in the power being down most of the day ... and so this work day ended up being a kindle-cation day because work was impossible. That's not a complaint. ;)

I grabbed something light and sweet, partially because I read something heavy last, and wanted a change, and partially because I expected to be interrupted with work stuff (didn't happen, no one had power). This was perfect. Pretty low drama, pretty low angst, this was a lovely story of people coming together. The FMC was a bit of a sunshine type, but not in a grating way - she was goddamn adorable, you guys, and that really isn't usually something I'm into - and one of the love interests is her step-brother - also not something I'm usually into, especially because I have step-brothers. I feel like I got body-snatched or something, because it gave me the absolute warm fuzzies and I ate it all up.

We've got some smut here, as you'd expect from a sweet omegaverse, but not as much as you might expect. Basically, this was a character-driven story, as these people all came together and we got to watch the relationships develop. I don't think we got smut until probably the halfway mark, and even then it didn't totally dominate the book. I'd say our ration here was maybe... 70% story, 30% smut. IMO it was perfect, though of course your mileage may vary. Also, for those who care about such things, there were MM relationships here. Even though the FMC was the center around which they all revolved, there was also a male omega and fulfilling relationships among the male characters too. It's probably more poly than RH.

This series will always flabbergast me, because it still remains a solid favorite even after 59 books.

The format works well for a long series, because it's basically like a cop show, like CSI - each episode a new case, which is interesting to unpick, but after the first few you're really there for the characters. This big, diverse cast of characters that come to feel like family, with each book being a chance to catch up with them. Generally I wobble the rating between 4 and 5 stars, and that's always hinged on the level of the murder mystery in that book, because the characters are always a 5 to me. And if the murder mystery is firing on all cylinders because it is a particularly compelling case, or because it particularly impacts the characters, it gets a 5.

I liked this case - even though it was terribly, terribly sad - because like Eve, I wobbled back and forth between two shitheads as the killer. It could easily have been either of them. And I liked the way it played out, with the one just being an entitled shithead, while the other is a murdering entitled shithead. This case was also fun because it had echoes of Eve's bachelorette party, something that made it a particularly compelling case for her. Not in a way that tore her up, but in a way that leaned hard on her empathy.

But overall, the best thing about this series is always the characters, and I love that they have grown and changed over the course of the series. Eve and Roarke's relationship started out, imo, as fire - super passionate, super volatile, and they hurt each other often (mostly unintentionally). They were two people who didn't really know how to be in a relationship, but were drawn to each other in a way that could not be ignored. There's a middle stretch of books that were hard (not really middle, though, given the crazy count we're up to now - it was book 14 that made me so angry I almost quit the series, but that was the worst of it) as these two strong personalities banged against each other before learning to become partners. But now that they have, it just gets stronger with each book, and their relationship is truly inspiring. Not the billionaire part (ha, though who would complain?) but the way they just completely get each other, and will go to the mattresses in support of each other. Serious relationship goals.

Anyway, loved it, and I'm sure will gobble up the next when it releases.

After a tough beginning (someone needs to light her brother on fire already, please), I liked this one a lot better than the first one.

Firstly, Hallie seemed like a bit less of a doormat ... after we were through that opening 20% or so. She felt more aggressive in general, and stood up for herself more, especially when she saw that dickhead investigator who broke her face in book 1. That was really good to see.

Secondly, we got to meet other hochlen that weren't 2-dimensional bags of fascist shit. That was

really helpful, because it negates the whole "why would you help any of these shitheads" element that I was struggling with. I liked the inspector boss guy (I think his name was Roth?), and I feel like that guy is going to offer her a job. He made no secret of the fact that he found her impressive. The techs on the Conclave team were great, so it was really just detective I'm-going-to-break-your-face that was the only example of douchebaggery on the Conclave Inspectors team. I can work with that. And even better, they seemed to warm up to her more as the book goes on, which tells me that they see her. They see what she is doing, how capable she is, and respect her. I really like that.

I like that Girard seems openly curious about this world of peons he knows nothing about. He's willing to engage with things. I still can't shake off what a condescending douche he was in book 1, and I'm not sure how to get past him hanging out watching her get tortured, but if I'm being honest, he felt like a different character in this book. Like, he had to shoot someone, and he was honestly, and obviously, upset about it. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with his character in book 1, but in any case, I like his book 2 character much more.

I wish book 3 was out. :(

Being brutally honest, I only finished this series because my completionist heart wouldn't let me not - I've been unhappy with it for a few books, but held out to see if the author could turn it around with Aiden and Lizzie. She did not, imo - see my review for book 11. But with only one book left in the series, I finished it.

This one honestly disappointed on a couple levels.

First: Aiden and Lizzie

I have talked a lot about this in my reviews for the last few books in this series, but their relationship is a fail to me. Aiden's behavior was so astonishingly shitty in book 8 that I honestly didn't see any way the author could redeem him and make me root for their relationship. But I was hopeful, because good authors can surprise you, and there is just SO MUCH about this series that is great that I'd peg Keri Arthur as a great author. But her view of a worthwhile relationship clearly differs from mine. Someone repeatedly being a complete asshole to you, then deciding he wants you, should not be met with you dropping to the ground, legs spread. But that's what we got in book 11, and it was deeply unsatisfying.

Lizzie's life has been a long chain of people telling her she's just not enough, from her parents onwards, and Aiden was not just the most recent, he was the worst of it. Lizzie deserves someone who thinks she hung the moon, because she's amazing, and Aiden just reluctantly settled for her because he was basically addicted to her. That's how it felt. His people resent her (his bitch of a mother is chief among the haters), and in general there's this air of reluctant tolerance about the whole thing. I hate that for her. I can't underscore that enough. She's amazing and deserves no less than people who see that about her. Instead, she's risked her life repeatedly to save a bunch of ungrateful, entitled bags of shit on this reservation ... who somehow persist in thinking that if she just went away, the problems would probably go with her. And they have mostly decided that since she seems stuck to their shoe like shit, they have to learn to live with it. They don't respect her at all, in any way. I hate Aiden, and I hate the pack (with just a few exceptions that are decent, like Jaz), and I cannot believe we're ending the series with this garbage non-resolution of her relationship within the pack.

Second: I don't give a flying fuck about the vampires

How is this vampire arc the culmination of the series?

Maelle has been a floating secondary character popping up in a few of the previous books, but her arc took over the last 2 books of the series. Why? Let me tell you, in this book we spent 80% of it watching a freaked out Lizzie do what Maelle tells her to do, like some kind of servant. Why? Even as evidence continued to unfold that this bitch was evil, Lizzie and the team just kept doing what she said to do, like she was some evil overlord they needed to placate. In the end, killing these vampires wasn't even all that hard. Why didn't her group of 5 badass witches just kill Maelle, and then kill Marie and her squad, and then have a party to celebrate being vampire-free on the reservation?

This bullshit eclipsed everything else - we had no werewolves, no pack, no setting up their life, no resolution with Karleen (I'm sorry, one token scene of her sulkily saying they should make a truce does not cut it, not when that bitch should be dead or at minimum in jail for attacking Lizzie ... and let's not forget she is the direct reason for all the evil on the reservation: her pigheadedness about the wellspring is what drew all the evil here, something she has NEVER admitted, preferring to blame Lizzie for all of it). I was hoping that this book would build on what happened in the previous, in terms of the pack, so that rather than Lizzie apparently ending the series as a reluctantly tolerated persona non grata up there (married to the alpha but with no voice in the pack ... when she gives birth to Super Mary Sue Baby, she'll be even more of an outsider because they'll happily absorb her kid, but she'll always be on the outside looking in), she would be embraced.

Frankly, the entire reservation needs restructuring, and it has been a major point throughout the series. The Wolf Council of Egotistical Asswipes that fucked literally everything up, those assholes are still in charge (minus Karleen, though we're told she still has a lot of supporters and will throw her weight around with them to make Lizzie miserable). These are the idiots who left the wellspring unprotected, kicking off these whole series as evil is drawn to the power. They never face consequences for that. They never face consequences for their treatment of the witches - not just Lizzie, but Ira, Eli, Monty, Belle - who saved their asses about 1 billion times over the course of 12 books, but are still treated like garbage. These fuckers let the vampires on the rez in the first place, but kept it secret. Why wasn't this final book about a restructuring? Like, the families of all the people murdered by the Council's idiocy rising up and demanding a new council, one that recognizes the witches who have been allies, and gives them a voice? One that doesn't keep deadly secrets (vampires) but instead is fully transparent so the town isn't fucked over by their terrible decisions?

Third: Even the Fenna are assholes?

We still don't know much about them, but none of our interactions with them in this book or the last feel good. They're manipulative, not just of Lizzie but also binding a fetus into a lifetime commitment without that person's consent. And then more manipulation to make sure they get control of the second wellspring. They happily use Lizzie as a pawn, even as they are judgey douches about her (that's retconned a little in this book, but it makes them a little more tolerable so I'll take it). In this book the Fenna seem to be revealed as a crowd of bossy dead assholes who think Lizzie is their slave. Thanks, but no thanks.

Is there no one in this series who actually respects or cares for Lizzie, aside from Belle, Monty, Eli, and Ira? She's treated like shit by the witches in Canberra, by the pack on the rez, by the wild magic who thinks she isn't good enough (and go fuck yourself with that, given that she's busted her ass for the wild magic from book 1 onward), and now by the Fenna who don't accept her but find her to be a useful tool until the baby is born as their bound slave.

Ugh. Seriously, ugh.

I just want Lizzie, Belle, Monty, Ira, and Eli to leave. Go off somewhere and make a life as a family, away from the bullshit and drama, with no one given the privilege of being in their lives that doesn't recognize how damn awesome they are.

This slice-of-life series is a firm favorite, and so it isn't surprising that I enjoyed this one. The residences have finally arrived, and seeing the Ghost Mountain pack try to learn how to live in a place that now has real beds is heartwarming.

The only downside is that this series has a bajillion characters, and so when I first found it and binged it, everything was fresh in my brain and easy to follow. But now that I'm caught up and there's a gap between books, it can be hard to remember who is who. I found that to be especially true with this book, as several somewhat more distant secondary characters were part of the focus.

Oh well, it just means I need to re-read. :)

I really loved this. I loved the mash up of pantheons, and the way their family and friends ended up being a kind of Switzerland - good, compassionate Mythics regardless of pantheon were all welcomed in their home. And I really loved the journey the FMC had to take to fight for her HEA. And the epilogue was just lovely, a wonderful coda for the duology.

A fun, fast RH. It's a big harem - 7 guys - so none are as well developed as I'd personally prefer, but in the end the story was just so delightful I had to give it 5 stars. I know I'll read this one again.

**Magic Tests ONLY**

I worried about this book, because it seemed like Vesper and Kyrion backslid from where we left them in book 2. Like, we had two whole books of them being undecided about the bond, but they accepted it explosively in the end of book 2 (and then book 3 was a novella with Zane). To have them floundering in awkward, unsure land in this book was frankly irritating.

But I do get it. Accepting the bond doesn't make their personal baggage go away, and they both have a backstory that makes them not trust in love. Not trust that the universe won't pull the rug out from under them. They needed to shake that off in this book, and choose to be all in.

Vesper was also surprisingly TSTL in a couple places. She's generally been a very solid, competent main character, so that was an unhappy development. I'm not sure if it's just that being up against another seer brought all her insecurities to the fore, or what, but it felt like she was repeatedly eager to go off without Kyrion in this book, and it was pretty much a shit show every time.

That said, I liked it. I like them together. And I liked the progression with the Zimmers (Zane and Wendell... Beatrice can suck it). I did not like the Colliers much - I have no idea why Asterin was treated like an outsider in the family. We got the story of her dad, but like, okay. Why does her dad making a mistake in the mine tarnish everyone's opinion of her? They seem to be fine with her mom, who remarried Lord Collier...so this made no sense to me. Also, Siya is a complete fucking bitch, and Kyrion should have killed her. Someone is going to sooner or later - her ego does not match her skillset - so it might as well be him, now.

Looking forward to the next one.