Overall Rating: 1 star
When deciding whether to read a book or not I usually spend a bit of time reading review and checking average ratings. There have of course been plenty of books that I like despite negative reviews and plenty of books that I don't enjoy despite the positive reviews. But there a couple reviewers that I have found have similar tastes to mine and generally I agree with their ratings. This book was a bit of surprise for me because those same reviewers that I usually trust raved about this book, and I found I had to force myself just to finish it.
I kept pushing my way through the book thinking that I must be missing something. And whatever "it" was, I definitely missed it because I just couldn't enjoy this book. The biggest issue that I had was that I really didn't like the characters much at all.
Adelina was the main character and everyone talked about how strong she was a character and how "dark" she was. But Adelina was a bit bipolar, to say the least. She spends most of the book cowering and crying and then lashing out when she can't take it anymore. Even in her mind she is scared one minute and then relishing in the pain of others in the next moment. And she was so desperate. It seemed like they were trying to write her as a bad girl with her own deep darkness, but she wasn't deep or dark or strong. Most of the time her moments of power were more like a tantrum. Toward the end she finally starts to manage her powers and that's when she has her "dark" moments, but they are all moments when she loses control, and afterwards she just feels guilty and reverts to her weak persona. I didn't like Adelina as a person or a character, I found to her be weak and more than a bit annoying with all her self doubt and cowering.
The main love interest wasn't much better. He was cold and selfish for the most part and while the two were drawn to each other for their power, I felt like they were using each other more than anything else. He still loves someone else and wanted Adelina for her power and what she could do for him. And while he may have kissed her and stayed with her on that last night, it never seemed like he felt for her what he still felt for his lost love. And Adelina just wanted to feel valued. He was cold and aloof most of the time and just kept falling at his feet over and over again because she was desperate and wanted that type of connection with someone, anyone. Not exactly the best love story.
Their archenemy, was also a very ridiculous, stereotypical enemy. He is a fanatic and an idiot who is being used by the Queen. From the book summary I was expecting more involvement from his character. He kept showing up and was supposedly recruiting Adelina but there was no real, believable character building from him and no real relationship building between him and Adelina (which seemed to be hinted at in the summary).
The only character that I even liked much at all was Raffaele but while there was a lot of potential there, his character was mostly written as a shallow, pretty face for most of the book. He had the most potential to be strong and ruthless and there were glimpses of that, but even at the end I didn't feel like he really lived up to what I wanted from him as a character.
And now after having written that I feel a little bad and I'm not sure why. Maybe I really am missing something that everyone else saw, and maybe I'm being more harsh because of the frustration of having forced myself to keep reading a book I wasn't enjoying only for it to have such a horrible ending. I won't go much into that because I don't think I can really rave like I want to without giving away too much of the ending, but by the time I got there, I was really just done with this book. I was hoping for something to make it seem worth the effort I made to get to the end of the book and it wasn't.
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