Author: Brittany Cavallaro
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Length: 368 pages
Source: Purchased Book
The hotly anticipated and explosive third book in the New York Times bestselling Charlotte Holmes series.
It’s been a year since the shocking death of August Moriarty, and Jamie and Charlotte haven’t spoken.
Jamie is going through the motions at Sherringford, trying to finish his senior year without incident, with a nice girlfriend he can’t seem to fall for.
Charlotte is on the run, from Lucien Moriarty and from her own mistakes. No one has seen her since that fateful night on the lawn in Sussex—and Charlotte wants it that way. She knows she isn’t safe to be around. She knows her Watson can’t forgive her.
Holmes and Watson may not be looking to reconcile, but when strange things start happening, it’s clear that someone wants the team back together. Someone who has been quietly observing them both. Making plans. Biding their time.
Someone who wants to see one of them suffer and the other one dead.
Review:
Protagonists: Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes are very broken people, and after the tragic and unexpected death of August Moriarty, everything has fallen apart. It's weird not seeing these characters together for a rather large portion of this book, but what I found interesting is that we really get to see Jamie try and figure himself out. After August's death he's been a mess and while having Charlotte there might have made things better in the short run, in the long run, things might never have evolved in Jamie's character. Charlotte remains her ever enigmatic self, but I really appreciated the range in her character that we get to see from this book.
Romance: When it comes to the main romance of this series, I understand that the relationship between Jamie and Charlotte isn't the healthiest, but the great part is that it's still a relationship that can be developed. I want to see them happy and I want a happy ending for them, but their, for lack of a better term, complicated relationship is not exactly the softest nut to crack... is that even a saying. Anyway, their complex relationship is fantastic and I loved seeing it evolve and change over the course of this book. I'm completely obsessed with this atypical relationship and I really love where the author takes their relationship in this book.
World Building: So, whereas the first installment in this series put a large focus on the mystery element and the boarding school, and the second book was all about diversifying the relationships as well as solving the mystery of Leander Holmes' disappearance, this story really just felt more character driven than anything. I enjoyed the book and the story the author provides, I just wish there was more of a mystery element here, however, Lucien Moriarty has always been the big bad of this series and a mystery wouldn't exactly be compelling if we already knew for a fact who was behind it all. This story still has some shocking moments which I'll get to in a bit and I appreciated how we got to see Sherringford again, as it's where this story began, still, this story has a very large scope and it's interesting to see how far this series has come.
Predictability: Looking back on this book, other than the obvious, I couldn't really see where this story was going. I mean there were some pretty dramatic reveals in this book despite not having a central mystery. Lucien's plan for Jamie and Charlotte is extreme and there are some very unsettling things he's done in this book.
Ending: The final climax of this story went quite a bit faster than I expected, in fact, I remember going into the cooldown period feeling like I was missing some closure to the story, something that I didn't expect to get from the climax cooldown. The final climax itself, while quick, was still very tense and I wasn't 100% sure where the author was going to take the ending. Oh, and that little bit of closure I felt I didn't get, well the epilogue to this book is pretty spectacular.
Rating:
Going into this review I thought about giving this story a lower rating because I missed that central mystery to this story, but in the end, there's no way a central mystery could have compellingly worked out, and I have to say the story is freaking incredible!
No comments:
Post a Comment