Not bad, just not a fan of the author's writing. Ixbaab and the Tess break up, then you have more of Diane's scheming by having Micah live in Tremontaine house as a guest, yet she uses her as a threat to make Rafe do what she wants him to do.

Thanks to netgalley.com and Serial Box Publishing for the advance ARC copy for my honest review.

POV – 3rd person, multi character, often omni-present
Would I read it again – Yes!
Genre – LGBT, Fantasy, Serial, Historical, Coming-of-Age, Queer
Content Warning – mild violence, sexual situations, adultery/cheating, prostitution
Orientations – MM, MF, FF



** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **



I love the world building of this series, and the talented writers who bring it all together, but I was left heartbroken by the events of Season One and I'm hopeful that Season Two will at least offer some relief from that. I'm coming straight into this, just an hour after finishing Season One, so it's all fresh in my mind. There are still the infrequent issues of editing mistakes, changes of tense that don't always make sense, as were in Season One, but the recurring issue of font change has been eliminated, which is a relief.

Because of the format Netgalley sent, or perhaps because of how Kindle interprets them, the formatting for the first half of this series of ARC's was terrible. The documents had either one or two lines then a line of gapping, repeated throughout and it wasn't only hard on the eyes, but made it more difficult to follow in terms of flow. The second half were much better formatted.

~

Episode 10: The Coming Night, by Joel Derfner

★★★★★
Pages: 43

Why am I so cursed as to descend into sobbing tears at every episode from Joel Derfner? Why must they always have Rafe's heart and cut it open right in front of me?
There isn't much I can say about this one, because I'm utterly broken by it, but we got a little piece of Lionel and Esha, who is as much a schemer as Diane, and well as the hellish woman herself, twisting Micah around her little finger. Again, she manages to find the way to send a spear right through Rafe's heart, while leaving him no way out. But, at least Will is okay, now. I hope.
Then again, having any hope at all in this series almost always proves futile.

Favourite Quote

“Will rose, strode toward Rafe, and embraced him fiercely. “My love,” he said, his mouth warm near Rafe's ear. Rafe returned the embrace, his arms wrapped around Will as if he could shield him thus from all the danger that lay beyond the door.”

““Until...until we meet again,” he whispered, and left behind the room, and the house, and his lover, forever.”

This was a slightly better volume, tight-paced and with more insight into (one) character. Diane is fleshed out again (Derfner's parts tend to work quite well for me in that regard). Unfortunately, it was also pretty inconsistent in terms of characterisation for Micah, whose autism was much more pronounced here, all in service of the plot. It's all the more disappointing since well-written neuroatypical characters are not that common, and making Micah's autism into a plot device that appears much more prominent when it suits the plot and recedes when it doesn't does a disservice to the character overall and the book in general.

But the development with regard to Rafe's character is quite promising.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, who availed me of the book in exchange for a review.

'd heard a ton of good things about this serial, and I unwisely chose to enter it midstream. I did not get much out of it. Many pretty people who either want to or are having sex with each other, and there's a chocolate business somewhere too. I think I came to it too late.

I think my main quibble with this serial continues to be that the different authors really seem to have different ideas of how autistic the character of Micah actually is. In most of the episodes, she seems to be just one step beyond 'socially awkward,' but then on occasion it gets a lot more extreme - in a way that serves the plot. And that happens here.

However, there were also parts of this episode that I did particularly like, especially the insights into how Diane is, internally, ducking her sense of personal responsibility for her own horrific actions - while continuing to do yet more horrible things.

Charming as she may be, I would not be sorry to see her finally get her comeuppance!