Just One More Chapter

This book happend to keep me up until the wee hours, laser focused and transfixed. I'm not sure if it was the writing, the 3 cups of Jasmine black tea or my insomnia but I found it difficult to put down and then even more difficult to eject from my brain in order to let the sleep in. There were annoying parts a plenty... A voracious itch in my cozy reading space that refused to be satiated. This was mostly due to a drawn out, ferverous Hate to an All consuming, unyielding, unparalleled Love that blossomed in just 3 days. "I love her but does she love me? If she does I'll love her always but if she doesn't?!? I'll still love her. She does?..but she shouldn't, but she can't fight it, but she must..blah blah blah". It was sweet at times and the other times it was absolute torture to endure. There were a couple of plot twists that I was blindsided by...YAY!.. and a couple of easier ones to suss out...Meh. The story was told in a duo of dueling POVs. Both Kestra and Simon had unique voices so it was never necessary to flip back and forth in order to remember whose head we were in...especially since Simon's main concern was any and all things Kestra. Kestra on the other hand was a mess making, extremely pretentious turned slightly less pretentious though all around bull headed, wishy washy wet noodle (mainly on the Love front but still...), pain in the rear. I never fully got behind her no matter what her deal was at that moment, especially difficult to pull off since who/what she was changed so often. I wish I liked her better and was able to feel/experience along side her but alas, I found myself stuck between an obnoxious wreck of an MC and a whiny/pining lump of a supporting MC hence the lower rating even though it kept my attention quite handily. The story was interesting BUT, in my most humble of opinions, you've got nothing if you don't have at least one character you can really align yourself with and this bunch?!? They earned a big NOPE from me.

3 stars for the plot BUT the character woes, insta-love mess and overall sense of Meh it cultivated in me lead me to penalize the rating and ultimately wish I had skipped this one. Book #2, Traitor's Heart, is definitely not in my future.