Maeve and her friends have revealed their powers and banded together as a coven: Roe can pick locks, Lily sends sparks flying, Maeve can read minds and Fiona can heal any injury.
– GoodReads
My Review
CW: Transphobia, homophobia, self harm are strong themes in this.
They’re back; Maeve, Roe, Fiona and Lily. They’ve had a summer together developing the powers that came with the conclusion of All our Hidden Gifts and Maeve struggles with her natural gift against those her friends have earned.
Maeve feels left out and she can’t blame Lily for her not wanting to be her friend but there is something about the prospect of graduating and losing Roe and her best friend Fiona that has her scared.
I enjoy that we see just so many of Maeve’s flaws but also how they come from a good place. She is trying, always, but that doesn’t mean that it always works out. Seeing her failures, it’s easy to connect the consequences and actions she takes at every turn.
A lot of books and/or series and their authors can suffer second book syndrome but I actually. think the opposite happened here. O’Donoghue completely made this series. I really enjoyed the first book but I may have enjoyed the second book more. There was something so much more cohesive and this plot that I didn’t even know I needed just took me by surprise.
The characters are so much more fleshed out and I loved that we got more of Maeve interacting with Lily and Fiona and more of the knowledge of what’s going on. I think I would have liked to see more of Lily and Fiona without Maeve but it’s not possible when Maeve is our perspective, so maybe just even more character interaction next time.
As for Aaron’s development…*chef’s kiss* we get a bad guy who is now in the territory of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and I am here for that.
Roe wasn’t as prevalent but I did enjoy seeing how the band growing was a change.
Pacing was flawless, it’s one of the reasons I knew I was probably going to enjoy this, because O’Donoghue does a great job in sticking to a pace that makes the book hard to put down.
4/5 cups of coffee, I think I would have loved more from the other characters but I did really enjoy it and it was almost perfect. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for my honest review. I CANNOT wait for book 3!!
The Caffeinated Reader 