House of the Rising Sun (Crescent City #1) by Kristen Painter

Overall Rating: 3 Stars

Date Finished: September 16, 2016

This book left me a bit torn. There were things that I liked and things that I didn’t like, which made it very hard to rate.

Based on the blurb you expect a book all about Augustine, but there are actually two main characters and alternating POV’s between the two of them. The second character is Olivia’s daughter, Harlow. And this is where things get complicated.

See, Harlow is pretty hard to like in the beginning. She’s closed off, selfish, and afraid of just about everything except for computers and online gaming. She is even afraid of her own Fae heritage and closes herself and pretends to be human. The good thing is that it gets better. Harlow grows throughout the book and is more enjoyable towards the end of the book, but the first part of this book it’s still hard to deal with her. And while the character POV gives you some understanding as to why she acts the way she does she just keeps going back to that “void” in her life all because she doesn’t know her Dad is. I understand the frustration, but you don’t just cut yourself off from the world because you don’t know who your dad is.

On the other hand, Augustine was a very likable character. Just enough rogue and darkness to be interesting and his interactions with Harlow are quite enjoyable.

There is some action and intrigue and mystery and it all seems to be building up to something big, and that is where I got really disappointed. See, there is this big fight going on with the vampires and yet every fight feels summarized. There’s no suspense, no tense moments, and it was all usually over in one page or less. And so I kept thinking, well, she’s building up to the big fight at the end.

And then the vampire boss kidnaps Harlow, and when Augustine comes home the fight is literally over in 1 minute or less. So I think, now it’s all going to come to a head, or some new information will be revealed or there will be some sort of cliffhanger, and yet, it just ends. In fact, I found myself paging back and forth and the end of the book wondering if my copy was somehow missing the last chapter!

The beginning was slow, the middle got better, and there was lots of buildup and yet that was the worst ending ever. All the exciting parts of the book felt brushed over and not well developed and I found that very unsatisfying, and anticlimactic.

And yet, despite all of my frustrations, by the end I really liked the characters. That alone will probably be enough for me to read the next book but I really hope things pick up because this was frustrating.

And I should note that I did not read the House of Comarre series (I guess this is a spinoff of that series).