Amy Kuivalainen

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
🌶🌶/4
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A finale to this enticing series (but hopefully we get more from this world!). We are once again in Venice with none other than the Grand Sorcerer himself. Amy always writes incredible couple dynamics that really showcase how a pair can compliment and match each other, while also challenging each other in interesting ways. The duo in this book take it to another level. Through magic, fate, and a whole lot of sexual tension, these two are both usually isolated from the world due to their gifts. But when they can come together, it’s an incredible adventure to stop a war…. And to find what it means to really find your true match.… (mehr)

A few reviewers have mentioned that it may have been better to come into this having read the other books, and I'll acknowledge that as well. The book, despite being a stand alone, makes some assumptions about what the reader knows about the universe. It makes connecting to the characters hard in the beginning, especially as we are only told things about them by the other characters and see very little of it for ourselves. Much of the prose and dialogue felt forced and disconnected, and the pacing was a little uneven for my taste. There was a lot of head-hopping POV-wise, and often felt that the author was simply using different characters to tell the reader what happened and try to convince us what the characters were through telling. It didn't get very immersive until 2/3 of the way through. It was cute though.

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Though it's put forth as a standalone novel, I feel like I'd have a better sense of some of the characters involved if I'd already read the other Firebird books. Kuivalainen does a good job of filling in the blanks, but I think familiarity with the other books would help provide some emotional weight to this narrative. Having said that, because I *did* like this one, I am adding the others to my TBR list.

I think my criticisms are due to my version being an ARC. Formatting made transitions hard to follow--a time- or scene-jump would occur without a paragraph break, so it wasn't always immediately obvious that time had passed or that the perspective had changed.… (mehr)