DNF 50% Wow is this book even wordier then the first book except without being as interesting and the romance not being as realistic. This was just not at all for me and I don’t understand the appeal. Nothing happens! Like for so long you are just following the same story and facts we already know from the first book. We are given more details about one of the characters and his childhood sure. But these details are given as what feel like flashbacks due to the way the book jumps around from past to present. The past flashbacks just dont feel nearly as interesting. This is mostly due because of the way its shown in flashbacks and the writing just didn’t feel nearly as good. It was once again very word but lacked the poetry feel and not as flowery as the first book to get away with it. It just felt overly wordy and absolutely nothing very interesting happening. The back story was all kind of stuff that I felt I already knew as the first book alludes to a lot of these details already. The change in percpective was neat but it didn’t really give enough juice to keep it interesting. It felt very repetitive, like going over stuff we already know. The point of view shift really just gave us overly wordy explanations of what was going on but didn’t feel as detailed with emotions or poetically any different from the first book. The childhood storyline ended up feeling messy because of the time jumps constantly and no build up in the characters to feel anything for what this kid was going through. I mean, not really a spoiler since this happens so soon but a good example of this, the scene where the mom tries to drive away with her son but gets stopped by wolves and keeps trying to warn her son about not trusting them and the evil of his magic. Except take that minor story bite and blow it up to a wordy mess of useless information. It’s useless because the lack of really any details or build up to care about any of it. I kept waiting for any explanation but then it just keeps jumping to other story bites. It felt so empty, like this empty shell of a character keeps getting story bites to explain his past but the lack of build up and detail kept getting in the way to mentally be able to attach it to this character to make him feel real. This happened constantly too with these childhood story bites, it never really made him feel real. The current day story line was so bad, it was so ridiculously bad. Nothing about what was happening during the current day was at all ever interesting. It showed details of what we kinda already knew as well. From the first book it goes in to detail about how much of a huge waste of time it was with them all leaving for 3 years. Well guess what now we can enjoy that huge waste of time by experiencing it with them. Honestly the point of view to finally see what happened in those 3 years was so painfully boring. I could not be less interested. I felt like the author didn’t even try to sell it as anything interesting as it is just wordy garbage again but a whole lot of focus about how little there was to do and how much they miss home. Yeah I think i could have figured out that they missed home on my own Sherlock, but give me some details I didn’t know. Give me something I can latch onto and care about. It just kept never giving me something to latch onto. I couldn’t continue. I just kept feeling like my time was being wasted. Some minor drama happens but since it’s flashbacks and we know they all get away safe thanks to the first book, I absolutely felt no thrill or worry for them. The romance felt so tacked on that i had a hard time believing in it. The big issue with that is it had absolutely no build up to it. One day they touch hands as kids and the next they are practicing kissing. I didn’t feel believable tension and didn’t feel like it was as detailed with their feelings to get me to buy into this. The writing also felt repetitive trying to use the same wordy fluffy poetic writing as the first book but it oh most felt like it was written by a different author because I read this just weeks after reading book 1 and the shift in how poorly this pulled off poetic writing was extremely noticeable. I could stand the first books wordiness because of the poetic writing. I could not stand this books wordiness because the lack of being able to pull off that same rhythm and flow it just felt very hodge podge and lacked focus. After a certain point of my time being disrespected I just had to call It quits. Its such a huge book and felt like pure fluff with none of the juicy newness of the first book and not as good writing or romance to keep my attention. I hate that I hated this book but I hate this book.