Filler-filled and drawn out

“We don’t let them decide who we get to be. We’ll carve our own paths.”

Title: House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2)
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Release Date: 15 February 2022
Rating: 2.5/5 stars

This is probably going to be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I’ve definitely seen people share similar thoughts. In fact, I’m convinced that most Goodreads reviewers read a completely different book than I did, seeing as the Goodreads rating sits at a solid 4.5 stars.

I won’t say that it was an uneventful book, since every character (main or not) had their own stories going on in addition to the main plot. This isn’t a bad thing, but it gets a bit concerning when I’m more invested in the side characters than the main characters.

Truth be told, it really felt like the main characters were Ruhn, Ithan, and Tharion, while Bryce and Hunt were just there doing their own thing. The main plot felt incredibly slow, to the point where anything to further the narrative rarely happened and I was genuinely considering DNF’ing this book. It doesn’t help that much of the 800 pages felt like unnecessary filler.

I’ll be honest: I got bored.

When the majority of the first half of the book consists of world-building and random side-quests the characters decided to embark on, it’s hard to feel any other way.

SJM’s writing also felt a bit uninspired and her word use has become incredibly repetitive. (If you take a shot every time she uses the word ‘lethal’, you’ll end up in the hospital less than halfway through). Her characters feel like copies from her other books and at some points, it feels hard to differentiate between the cast members.

However, that ending still managed to blow my mind.

I won’t lie, leaving readers on such a cliffhanger feels slightly manipulative, like we’ve just been tugged along for 800 pages and to say sorry, the writer leaves with a shocking ending. And despite me sitting in complete silence after completing it, trying to comprehend what had happened, it’s not enough to save this book.

I will definitely be reading the next book, as my curiosity will always win out in the end, but I can’t honestly say I’m excited about it.

Filler-filled and unnecessarily drawn-out, this does not feel like a book that deserves to be a category winner in the Annual Goodreads Choice awards.