Summary:

After a human uprising was brutally put down by the Elders—a primitive and lethal form of the Others—the few cities left under human control are far-flung. And the people within them now know to fear the no-man’s-land beyond their borders—and the darkness…

As some communities struggle to rebuild, Lakeside Courtyard has emerged relatively unscathed, though Simon Wolfgard, its wolf shifter leader, and blood prophet Meg Corbyn must work with the human pack to maintain the fragile peace. But all their efforts are threatened when Lieutenant Montgomery’s shady brother arrives, looking for a free ride and easy pickings.

With the humans on guard against one of their own, tensions rise, drawing the attention of the Elders, who are curious about the effect such an insignificant predator can have on a pack. But Meg knows the dangers, for she has seen in the cards how it will all end—with her standing beside a grave.

Goodreads

Thoughts:

I’m sad because I’m finally finished this series and I really didn’t want it to end. BOOK HANGOVER. That’s the mark of a good series, in my opinion.

After the events of book four, which really felt like a huge climax for me, I was left wondering what more our friends here would have to tackle. I was scared–what would be waiting for them in this final book??? But no need to worry. There was less action but the tension remained high as The Elders came to Lakeside Courtyard to learn the difference between ‘good humans’ and ‘bad humans’ in order to decide what to do with the humans who survived their destruction. So while the stakes felt more personal in this one, they really couldn’t have been any higher. I feel like this was an interesting way to go about the last book because it really brought everything back down to a more individual level and makes you think about how everyone affects everyone else in a society.

While I do love what the author is trying to say here I do think for this book in particular that the characters of Monty’s family (mother and sibling’s) felt like they relied a lot on stereotypes and I didn’t think that was cool. Especially glaring when it’s relying on those stereotypes to carry the plot forward. That being said, going back I do think stereotypes were relied on a lot when it came to side characters in particular (not even side, but like characters really on the fringe of things) and also the ‘villains’ so maybe it’s not wholly unexpected in the case of Monty’s brother and his wife but for some reason it felt particularly egregious. Perhaps because Monty’s brother is the main source of trouble here he gets a lot more page time. Not sure.

Let me talk about Simon and Meg for a minute. Because holy slow burn. Seriously…this is the slowest slow burn romance in the history of slow burn romances. And I had to LOL at the outside interference they eventually get because honestly if it wasn’t for someone butting in and being like ‘no this is how it is’ they might still be dancing around one another forever wondering ‘what is this thing between us?’. Ahhhhh, I love them both so much. They’re both so inexperienced when it comes to certain things that they have to learn them together and really they’re all kinds of perfect for each other for so many reasons. You don’t understand how happy I was at the end of this book. Except maybe I would have liked a little more but I’ll be content with all the little moments we got between them (and there were quite a few in this book).

All of the characters, but especially Meg and Simon, go through a lot of growth over the series. Meg is so far from where she started out, taking a huge leap forward but also still so scared of everything and relying on her addiction to cut. She is now, by this book, actively looking away and using other methods for her prophecies. It’s not that the urge to cut isn’t still there, but she’s turning towards other things instead of giving in to those urges. And Simon is learning a lot more what it means to be human and also thinks, well, maybe that isn’t the worst thing ever when before it probably was one of the worst things he could imagine. This series has so many characters, and so many of them I’d love to learn more about. I’m wondering if any of them show up in the next series at all…

I do feel like this series is not without its issues. As I said before, I have some issues with the world building and this alternate Earth set up because what happened with the indigenous people of the Americas? Did the great migration never happen in human history? So we’re just erasing all those people now? That doesn’t sit right with me. But also there’s a whole settling of the new continent that’s kind of glossed over and you can’t expect the people that live in what is, essentially America, to act like anything we’d know and recognize today since there would be an entirely different history there (can’t help thinking about how different the world would look due to different aspects of human migration in our history having not been played out at all or having played out differently). Anyway. For me it’s not really that deep because overall I really love the characters and story so much but I would have felt remiss not having mentioned it.

Overall, another book to love in this series! I did have an excellent time reading this book and dragged it out just a bit because I didn’t want it to end. Luckily for me there’s a spin off series so I guess I’ll be checking that out next. 4.5/5 stars.