This was adorable! I am really enjoying the Castles Ever After series. Rafe and Clio were such a lovely match. Heartrending at times but still, they just had this thing about them where you had to cheer for them to eventually make it. 

There was a nice little surprise twist for me (and Clio) at the end that I liked too. I just overall really enjoyed this read. 

Definitely recommend this to historical romance fans or fans of the forbidden love trope. Great read!

Side note - can Avon please stop it with these pun titles? I am a sucker for a good pun, but these ones are just killing me. 

This was my decision for the return flight today and I was a bit disappointed. This is my second Duran book and I absolutely loved The Duke of Shadows, so I sort of had high hopes for this one. 

Duran has a remarkable knack for setting and place. My favorite part of this book was the setting. Queen Anne has just died and the country is in turmoil with the new King shaking up the government. Then there are the Jacobites trying to get a Catholic king. It's a cool point in history to set a romance novel and one that we don't often see. 

But there was something lacking for me with the characters. I just could not connect with them, nor empathize with them, nor really care about them, which of course in a book primarily about the romance is problematic. Nora was just frustrating and Adrian so confusing. I feel like I missed part of their story with the majority of the events being told to me as they had happened in the past or off page. 

I saw a lot of telling not showing in the book. And while I liked it in the historical sense, I really disliked it in the romance sense. 

I swear I could make a generator for historical romance titles. There are only like four verbs and various titles. Or the puns, dont forget the puns.

Anyway, this book. I liked it. I read it on a cross country plane ride and it kept me sufficiently entertained the whole time. I loved the characters, I loved the story, I loved the tension. I didn't rate it higher because it was sort of predictable? But still entertaining. 

Ransom is a duke living in his castle after an injury, but unknown to him, the castle may or may not have been sold and then left in a will to Izzy, who is quite destitute and desperate for a home. Her tenacity and his stubbornness clash together with brilliant sparks of the best kind.

I love Tessa Dare's writing. It's a good mix of humor and sensuality. I really want to pick up the next one in the series now. :)

So this is book four, the final book in the series. I wish I remembered more of the other books going into it, but because it had been almost two years since I read the third, it was a little rough starting this. But I was quickly sucked back in the world.

I think this book did a good job of balancing out time between four protagonists, Cinder being the main one. I liked the story. The characterization of each of the characters was consistent with the other books. I really hate when stories lose track of their characters in sequels and this does not happen here. 

Some of the magic was gone for me though. Winter was sort of like Snow White, but not a lot of cool ways like some of the other books. But I guess that happens when you also have to wrap up the stories that have been unfolding in the previous three books.

While the story was fun and engaging, I didn't really feel like anything surprised me. It wraps up so nice at the end that I was sort of getting sick of all the love declarations... but I guess that is to be expected. Overall I like it. It was a good ending to a series that I enjoyed reading. 

It is impossible to talk through my reactions to this book without spoiling things that are slowly revealed in the last three books in this series... so if you haven't yet finished and want to be surprised, scroll on down the dashboard, dear reader, but if you want to hear me rant a bit, read ahead.

First off, I didn't hate this book as much as the last one. That book was just fucked up in it's premise/execution/definition on what is a redeemable character. This one was just an amazing premise/setup with a piss poor execution. 

Chase is a strong woman. She has literally built her life up from nothing into this outstanding, freeing leader of the Fallen Angel. She has a good thing going for Victorian England. Her motivations for wanting to get back into society that she literally despises enough to build an empire around it's ruination makes no sense from the get go, even if it's for her child. 

West is a little... off in this book. I remember liking what we saw before, but damn it all if that didn't disappear. His fixation on Chase has merits, but his interactions with his blackmailer make no damn sense. 

But worst of all, the romance, the romantic interactions, the banter between the two, it's boring and repetitive. So. Many. Internal. Monologues. All saying the same damn thing. There were some good things, but just not enough to make me care. I had high expectations after the first two books, after the monstrosity that was the third, I lowered them some. This one was just disappointing in it's boringness and hypocrisy. 

Others have liked it. I am just not one of them.