Ruthless gods – ARC review!

Title: Ruthless gods (Something dark and holy #2).

Author: Emily A Duncan.

Format: E-ARC (Thanks to NetGalley, all opinions are my own).

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press.

Page count: 386.

Release day: April 7^th 2020.

Genre: YA, fantasy.

Rating: 3 stars.

*See my review for book 1, Wicked saints, here!*

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

Darkness never works alone…

Nadya doesn’t trust her magic anymore. Serefin is fighting off a voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him. Malachiasz is at war with who–and what–he’s become.

As their group is continually torn apart, the girl, the prince, and the monster find their fates irrevocably intertwined. They’re pieces on a board, being orchestrated by someone… or something. The voices that Serefin hears in the darkness, the ones that Nadya believes are her gods, the ones that Malachiasz is desperate to meet—those voices want a stake in the world, and they refuse to stay quiet any longer.

My thoughts:

I absolutely loved Wicked saints earlier this year, it wouldn’t surprise me if it will be one of my favourites of the year! So I was so excited that I got the ARC of the sequel! Unfortunately this one let me down a bit.. Not to say that it was bad, but after loving book one, this one just did not meet with my expectations!

I just really struggled focussing on this story, every time I was reading this book my mind just wandered off. While with book one I just could not stop reading!

I feel like there was just way less exciting action in this book. It contained more planning and stuff compared to book one. Even though book one also had some planning in there. It is also not like this book contained a lot of politics or anything. There are some royals in their group, but they are quite distant from their actual countries. Although I feel like this is going to be a bigger thing in the third book!

I’m still a big fan of the characters, Nadya and Serefin, and most of the side characters! Especially Ostyia and Parijahan! Not so much of Kostya. There is also some weird romance situation going on, which already starts in book one, not a big fan of that either.

There are definitely some things happening in this book that make me excited to read book three (which will release in at least another year I guess..)!

I feel like this book suffered a bit of middle book syndrome..

3 stars, because I still really enjoyed the characters, there were some interesting plot points, but there were also quite some boring (..?) parts were my mind just wondered off.

Happy reading!