Format: Hardback
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Page Length: 624 pages
Publisher: HarperTeen (July 27, 2021)
Star Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mr. Darcy‘s Rating: “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
A Chasing Mr. Darcy Review
Gods and Monsters is a book I looked forward to ever since I finished Blood and Honey. I was so excited to get my signed, personalized copy in the mail from Shelby Mahurin's indie bookstore.
Here’s a plot synopsis from Amazon: Evil always seeks a foothold. We must not give it one. After a heartbreaking loss, Lou, Reid, Beau, and Coco are bent on vengeance more than ever before—and none more so than Lou. But this is no longer the Lou they thought they knew. No longer the Lou that captured a chasseur’s heart. A darkness has settled over her, and this time it will take more than love to drive it out.
Truth be told, I didn't love Gods and Monsters. I didn't not love it either, so there is also that...honestly, my feelings are still in a big jumble about this book.
First, comparing this book to Serpent and Dove might not be fair, but that's the standard the series is held to for me. Both Blood and Honey and Gods and Monsters are not up to the same caliber as Serpent and Dove. The plot of Gods and Monsters is. jumbled and inconsistent, and it *somewhat* yields the efforts made in Blood and Honey irrelevant because it just drops some of those plot points. That complaint aside, I thought this book brought fans of the series the perfect amount of closure. I finished this book knowing where my favorite characters were, what they were doing, and how their endings, well, ended. I thought the chapters from Ansel's point of view were some of the best writing in the series, and I thought the emotions in those chapters were exceptional.
I also enjoyed falling in love with Jean Luc and Celie in this story. I didn't like them much at all in the previous books, but they steal the show in Gods and Monsters. Jean Luc strikes the perfect balance on all fronts, and he steals the show from Reid in the conclusion to the trilogy. Jean Luc is pure sex on the page in this story, and I am thirsting for a spin off series about Jean Luc and Celie that also gives me some sexy time. I said what I said.
While I guess I was overall disappointed in the plot of this book, I was satisfied with the ending of the trilogy. I think the plot of the second two books in the series reads like a duology that was stretched to a trilogy...and that's unfortunate, because Serpent and Dove had such a clarity of plot and amazing characters. Lou and Reid and their chemistry sort of get lost in the shuffle in this book, and I hated that because their chemistry is something I loved from the first book.
Overall, though, the closure this book brought me as a series fan earned it four stars from me. The parts that worked were executed to perfection, and the parts that didn't work, well, they just seemed sloppy to me. All that being said, I am happy with the closure this story gave me, and I think the ending my characters received was worthy of them.
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