Chain of gold! (Review)

Title: Chain of gold (The last hour #1).

Author: Cassandra Clare.

Format: Audiobook.

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books.

Page count: 624 pages.

Release day: March 3^rd 2020.

Genre: YA, fantasy.

Rating: 3 stars.

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

Chain of Gold is the first novel in a new trilogy that stars the Shadowhunters of Edwardian London.

Welcome to Edwardian London, a time of electric lights and long shadows, the celebration of artistic beauty and the wild pursuit of pleasure, with demons waiting in the dark. For years there has been peace in the Shadowhunter world. James and Lucie Herondale, children of the famous Will and Tessa, have grown up in an idyll with their loving friends and family, listening to stories of good defeating evil and love conquering all. But everything changes when the Blackthorn and Carstairs families come to London…and so does a remorseless and inescapable plague.

James Herondale longs for a great love, and thinks he has found it in the beautiful, mysterious Grace Blackthorn. Cordelia Carstairs is desperate to become a hero, save her family from ruin, and keep her secret love for James hidden. When disaster strikes the Shadowhunters, James, Cordelia and their friends are plunged into a wild adventure which will reveal dark and incredible powers, and the true cruel price of being a hero…and falling in love.

My thoughts:

I’m really having a difficult time reviewing this book.. I enjoyed it, but also not as much as I had expected to?

The beginning of this book contained a lot of setup, so it was quite slow. And because of the times that we are currently living in, my mind easily wondered off. Which made me a bit confused about all the characters and their relations, and I know this is very unfair towards the book but it made the beginning very hard..

But after a while, and some googling, I figured out all the characters and how they are related haha! And from that moment I really started to love so many of the characters! I think my favourite was Matthew Fairchild with Cordelia Carstairs a close second! Also the friendship between Cordelia and Lucie Herondale is precious!

After the first 100 pages the plot really picked up, and I got way more invested! I got more excited about picking the book up all the time! But there were still quite some parts were the book was a bit too slow for me, and getting on the edge of a bit boring?! But that could also be on me I guess!

I was quite surprised by some of the reveals being made at the end of this book, I expected we got to know this information in this series. But I didn’t expect to get this information already in this book! (trying to be vague here!)

I have listened to all of Cassandra Clare’s books so far, and I just really enjoy listening to her writing! I feel like it is so good for audiobooks!

I really think the audiobook could have benefitted from a full cast! The book now has one narrator, but POVs switch quite a bit, sometimes even in the middle of a chapter. So sometimes it took me a bit to figure out from whose POVs we were reading from!

I feel like now it sounds a bit weird that I rated this book 3 stars.. I just think the beginning was a bit too confusing and slow. And even though I enjoyed these characters, I do think the book could have been shorter! I think I would then have enjoyed the book a bit more, since there would probably be less slower parts!

As I mentioned in the beginning, I really struggled with writing this and I think you can notice haha! This review is very all over the place.

Have you read this book? What did you think?