Before I begin my review, can I just say that I hate covers where the guy's pants hang low to emphasize how perfectly built he and his abs are? I mean, if this guy's pants dropped any lower, we'd be experiencing the Full Monty. It's one of the worst offenders I've come across in the romance genre. A 2-second glance and it's really obvious just how *low* those jeans are. You can't help but look there. Everything leads the eye to look there: her hand angles toward it, the streaks that frame the couple arrow toward it instead of leading your eyes up the image, the U in SUN points *directly* at it. None of the other covers in the series are like this. I get that covers with bare-chested men indicate what type of book it is, but this is just ridiculous (and annoying).
At the end of the book I discovered an author’s note that explains that she underwent surgery and treatment for Stage Three colon cancer while writing the book and so it really impacted things. That note immediately helped me to forgive these oversights and to not question whether the first two books were a fluke. Dealing with severe illness is hard. (Colon cancer is one of the nastier cancers.) I can completely see not being able to have an adequate edit because of it. Yes, there are problems — the editing or lack there of — but it’s not indicative of the overall quality of the series, nor even of the storyline for the 3rd book.
The overall story is good. We get further character development. (At least, mostly.) We get to learn about the Moon Witches, and what happened to chase them into an alternate realm (Lunatera, where it's always night and people never age). We find out that her mother, Celeste, is really a nice lady who was stuck in a horrible situation. She left Ayla with her father for a really good reason (so that she'd be able to be age instead of being stuck as a baby for all eternity). We get to see their reconciliation.
Unfortunately, there were many things that pulled me out of the story. The amount of snarky notes I made to myself was high (my sarcastic cat was activated often and a muttered ‘really?’ could be heard). My emotional reaction to these flies in the ointment went from irritated, pissed off, detached, uninvested, that was a nice moment, and a grimace due to corniness. By the end, it felt really predictable and while the last couple of paragraphs were nicely written, I was left feeling like they were trite. (Felt less so after the author’s note. Then it felt poignant.)
This need for additional editing (plus the inclusion of some latent misogyny) is really what my quibble with this book is about. If not for her health issues, I think she would have tightened things up. Since she’s self published, she isn’t going to get that editor that will point out places where Kaden is acting completely out character. The start of the rehabilitation of Jordan's character would not have been so wholly clunky. I mean, she made Kaden a jerk 'that we don't know at all' so that we could forgive Jordan’s jerkiness. It came across really obvious and did not feel organic at all.
I’m not complaining about Jordan’s rehabilitation, nor were the reasons behind it a surprise. It was just unartfully done. Kaden’s behavior went from annoying alpha (typical of shifter males) > alpha-hole > extreme toxic masculinity. Once Jordan starts coming over to the light side, he does some stuff that are nice/sweet, but the energy is just too off. Even when he was faking niceness in order to woo her, it didn't have the same energy. The deus ex machina was so obvious and it really detracted from the story.
(For those of you unfamiliar with deus ex machina, it translates to *god in the machine*. It’s when things conveniently happen because the author wants them to rather than it being an natural development or outcome of the plot. Written well, DEM doesn’t bother me, but it did today.)
A pet peeve of mine that I think I've mentioned before is the misogyny that can be prevalent with the shifter genre. Hyper violence, infantilizing of women, toxic masculinity and mansplaining... these are symptoms of the problem and inculcating and normalizing them is what happens all too often. Unfortunately, they show up in this third book a lot, and in ways that drive me up the wall. Our hero, Kaden, in a fit of rage, kills some enemy shifters while they are unconscious and have no way to defend themselves. Ayla is appalled (as she should be) but later Kaden tells her "You enjoyed me being violent but won't admit it (to yourself) and what is Ayla's response? Does she tell him to jump in a lake and storm out? No, she 'admits to herself' that "maybe I did like him a little too much as a villain." And then she allows herself to be seduced. Telling a woman what she's thinking/feeling, treating her as someone who needs to be taken care of when she can take care of herself, patting her on the head, ignoring or refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of her feelings/opinions, excusing objections as just her being emotional, characterizing behavior negatively when it's done by a woman but positively when it's done by a man, these are all ways that misogyny
One of the problems that I have with romance novels in general is how they can normalize toxic behavior. (Not all of them, but enough to making it noticable.) Forcing physical intimacy -- ie, she doesn't want it, but then his sexual magnetism is too strong for her to deny her desire; or, she says no but she really wants to, she's sexually repressed, so he forces things and then she gives in and it's 'amazing!' -- THIS IS NOT ROMANCE (despite what Colleen Hoover's books might tell you). A broody male who is selfish and mistreats people is not a tragic, tortured hero and we should stop buying the lie that he is. At one point, Kaden basically assaults her. They're fighting, she doesn't want to have sex and says so, he then dominates her with his alpha manliness to show her who's boss, holds her down and forces himself on her. Instead of emphasizing that this behavior is rapey and destructive, the behavior is instead imbued with erotic sensuality and it ultimately furthers their romantic relationship.
Here's another example: Kaden's behavior in this book gets to the point where it's emotionally abusive. Ayla's response to the rift that it causes? "Surely there was some way to mend what was between us. Surely I could fix this still." Ayla is *not* responsible for any of it, but the novel perpetuates her habit of taking the responsibility for someone treating her like crap. She later sits down with her mother to talk it through and Ayla's grateful for how Mom listened without judgment. Does Mom tell her 'Stop taking the blame for his bad behavior!'? or 'He was completely out of line and you did the right thing in not bowing to his pressure.'? No. In fact, when Kaden finally apologizes (and it's a *good,* humble apology where he takes responsibility for the situation), does she tell him thank you and feel encouraged by how he got the rightness of her actions? No. Instead, she says "no, it's me who should apologize," effectively excusing his behavior as something she caused. THIS IS NOT ROMANCE, nor is it healthy behavior in a relationship (despite what Colleen Hoover books might tell you). Not recognizing and acknowledging abuse for what it is and excusing it away only normalizes it, which leads to people accepting it and believing they don't deserve to be treated better.
As a side note, calling bad behavior what it is, is a good thing (when it's done in a loving way). Healthy, 'good' non-judgmentalism would have been Mom saying 'that's wrong, that shouldn't have happened, but you're not [insert negative adjective here] because you ended up in this situation. And he's not a [insert negative adjective or noun] for doing it.'
Luckily, by the end of Book Three (and the beginning of Book Four), we see Kaden exhibiting healthy male behavior again and taking the blame for what he did, instead of letting Ayla do it. And Briggs starts having Jordan being a good guy, instead of having him be 'good' because Kaden's behavior is worse. The about face in Kaden's character is good (and welcome). I just wish that we wouldn’t have to suffer through it in the first place. I mean, we can like two males. Rhysand and Tamlin from ACOTAR are a good example of this. Rhysand was a questionable character in the first book. He turns out to be a good guy in the second book, not because Tamlin suddenly is jerk and is acting out of character, but because he was a good guy stuck in a horrific situation. His goodness was independent of Tamlin’s character. The seeds for Tamlin’s ‘fall’ were sown in the first book (like doing nothing to help Feyre under the Mountain, or destroying something in a fit of anger). His PTSD abusiveness is in character (and does not make his a bad person -- some of the other stuff might). My point is, his character wasn’t suddenly trashed so we can like the other guy.
Not so in this book. Kaden effectively becomes’ as bad as’ the Jordan we’ve grown to hate in the first 2 books. Adding some depth to Kaden’s decent into bastardry (nightmares, evidence of trauma affecting his actions, rather than the assumption about his vendetta with the Leos for brutally murdering his parents) would have kept the authenticity of this development. Instead of a tantrum-throwing bully with a bad temper, we would have gotten a good man's lingering trauma causing bad behavior.
I do have to give Briggs props for Kaden's apology. I’m not going to spoil what happened other than to say it really was not in line with Kaden's established character. The whole thing really ticked me off, honestly, and it’s one of the things that pulled me out of the story.
Beyond this issue is the devolution of Ayla’s character. It’s like her brain/smarts go out the window when she becomes Kaden’s woman. (I can’t call her his mate because she’s not in the shifter form of the word.) Becoming Alpha doesn’t do cause it but being in a relationship does. It’s like she sneezed and left her brain on the sidewalk 🤧. The minute they’re not together (however you want to take that word) she starts being smart again. Childhood abuse can lead to people making poor decisions, but, while the Leo pack and their allies are actively hunting you to kill you, deciding to have a girls' day and then a picnic in the park **without** any guards, is not a smart/wise decision. This is not a momentary lapse in sound judgment. It's being stupid. And it happens throughout the book.
Several things were pretty ridiculous and/or melodramatic. Here's a few:
- Kaden and Jordan are battling each other. Ayla gets in between them: "Please," I begged. "This isn't the answer! Have you ever stopped to think that this is exactly what the Sun Witches want?" Still they didn't listen. Both of these wolves are bigger and heavier than she is. They are "unhinged" in how they are attacking each other. How does she escape without injury?
- "My whole world was falling apart around me and I didn't even know what I could do to stop it." It was not that bad.
- Kaden takes a team to infiltrate the Leos' village, planning to assassinate everyone. "We sneaked into the town on high alert... but after a moment, Kaden raised his nose and inhaled sharply, "There's no one here," he said. He can tell, just by taking a big whiff, that there are no shifters hiding in fox holes or secret rooms in the entire village. Not even Gus's super sniffer could do this. (Psych reference.😁)
- Before the big battle, Kaden delivers a 'Braveheart/Henry V' speech: "For freedom!" he called out and the shifters surged forward, echoing his war cry.
- In the middle of the battle, which is a complete, chaotic melee, with shifters are "ripping each other apart like it was nothing. It was nothing short of a blood bath, worse than even the last Convergence... They can even turn shifters against each other." Ayla has time to take off the moonstone necklace her mother gave her for protection, go over to him (which 'him' do I mean?), gently touch his head and pet him, and then slide the necklace over his head?
- Speaking of the necklace, how did a necklace that drapes the pendant so that it nestles between her breast, how was it big enough to fit around his neck? And how did he know to call it a moonstone, when until recently, Moon Witches were considered wiped out?
Beyond these were the inconsistencies!
- It takes a spell that only Moon Witches know to travel to and from Lunatera. When Ayla's trying to figure out where she and Jordan can go and be safe from the Sun Witches (and their allies), she discards the idea because she "couldn't trust him not to reveal information about the place to the Sun Witches." How would Jordan do this, when he doesn't know the spell and doesn't have any moon magic?
- Ayla learns to teleport from the Moon Witches. Initially, she struggles and it takes a great deal of concentration for her to focus enough to get to a place. How then does she teleport to right outside the Leos' village, when she's never been there? How does she get them to the right place, when she doesn't know its coordinates nor what it looks like? It's not like she maybe, at some point in her life, had visited the village. Like her dad would take her along if he ever visited. The Leos and her pack (the Cancers) were mortal enemies. There's no way she would have ever gone there. And then, Briggs doubles down on them *not* teleporting because she's never been where they're going (they have to drive for many hours to reach the Convergence location).
- During that visit to the Leos' village, the team is using hand signals to give instructions (the way that soldiers and SWAT do when they're sneaking up on a target). How did Ayla and the other shifters who have just started learning how to fight know what the hand signals meant? Magic?
Those are just the ones that really stick out glaringly. There were more.
So, now I've had my rant, aired my gripes. All that said, I still liked the book.
My rating: 3/5 stars
Oh, I just thought of one other big positive: Briggs (mostly) avoids Ayla being 'the Chosen One'. You know, that trope where our MC is just so skilled in an extremely rare talent and is just so brilliant that they have the answers/ideas that save the day? While Ayla is special (she's part Moon Witch, which allows her to perform incredibly rare magic), other people beyond the OTP, and more specifically Ayla, come up with ideas/solutions that further the action. Additionally, our heroine is not smarter than our hero nor does she come up with ALL the ideas, even when he has years more experience than her at being a warrior and an alpha.
One other thought -- this series is a good study in the effect of trauma on people. Ayla was abandoned by her mother, abused by her father and step-mother, and treated as an outcast by her pack. The legacy of those hurts plays out during the series. Throughout the series, Ayla begins to heal and grow beyond its legacy. Kaden's parents were brutally murdered and becoming alpha was thrust upon him. He wasn't given time to grieve or deal with the guilt associated with it. He's forced into a state of perpetual alarm, and has no way of relieving himself of it or getting any justice. During the course of the series, Kaden is not only able to see some justice done, but he learns to forgive the people he holds responsible for it.
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