We got significantly less "an x was an x thing". I still think the prose was not as terrible as everyone made it out to be to begin with, but there are construction issues and the entire thing is so poorly conceived and researched that it feels like there is. There were some neat metaphors in there. There were some less neat metaphors. A hundred hints that say they actually care about you? I still think you want to kill me and I refuse to consider anything else. Diversity? An attempt was made. As we learn more about the world, we see more people, and they're more diverse than in the first book. I have my criticisms about how in books like this, race only feels skin deep, but an attempt was made. Is it a successful attempt? It was a step in the right direction that's for sure. Horny. Isla is so horny. Oro and Grim are also horny but they have more of a cap on it. This should not be a YA book for how often these characters are horny. There are multiple romance scenes written for the express purpose of titillation in which all the characters are adults. This is not written for children, or even teenagers. Because this is marketed at YA, most of these scenes end with some bullshit excuse for why they can't bone. Man, what's even the point? It's pushing the boundaries of how horny you can make something, for the pleasure of an adult audience, and still shelving the book as YA. The probably isn't the fact that it's horny, but its horniness skates along in this weird limbo gray area because of its genre, offputting and unsatisfying. I was gonna talk more about the type/count of romance scene, but I'll just leave it at the fact that the special edition of Lightlark from B&N had an extra scene from Grim's POV that you also see in this book through Isla's POV. The author REALLY loves that "I love that dress but it's in my way" line.

I’M HOOKED. I have read this book 3 times since it was released. The second time was because the plot twist is massive (one of several) and the type that makes you immediately want to re-read to see how you could have missed it. The third time, I re-read because I missed the world. Also, because I learned this was going to be a movie, so I wanted to experience it again.

A lot of the story (from what I read) relies on telling rather than showing and it leads to a lot of info dump so far. We are told that there were six realms, with six respective rulers, and six specific curses. We are told that Isla had a restricted childhood, who the perceived villains are, how the curses impact the different realms...

update: the overall star rating for this not-even-fully-released-yet book is killing me. i will still be reading (because i’m nosey). There could have been so much done with all these magic lines and islands and cultures? But basically it's stated they exist and that's it. There's no going into these places and describing them or their people or their magic or why we should care about any of them or how beautiful they can be. I was really excited to dive into this world and none of that occurred at all.So I will provide my own, more neutral take: this book was objectively not good. But it wasn’t vomit-inducing horrific. Like I said in a status update, it felt like watching a fail compilation: bad and nonsensical at times, but ridiculously entertaining. Honestly, however, it really was just your average YA fantasy that just had ridiculous hype and false advertising. I didn’t think I was even going to post my Goodreads review here because I figured you know, just because I DNF’d this book doesn’t mean other people wouldn’t like it. I thought I’d be nice and just not give it any attention at all rather than bringing a negative light to it. But I DNF’d this book a week ago, and every day I am more pissed off over it, so I just have to get this out there. Miss girl was honestly very dumb, but she and Oro were the most interesting characters in this whole book. I rarely use GoodReads, but because I received an advanced copy of the book, I thought it best to distribute this review across all platforms where I have an account. You can find me over on the storygraph, username bean. Thanks for the arc btw!

Isla Crown has secured the love of two powerful rulers and broken the curses that plagued the six realms for centuries, but few know the true origins of her powers. Now, in the wake of a crushing betrayal, Isla finds herself hungry for distraction, preferring to frequent Lightlark’s seductive haunts instead of embracing her duties as the newly crowned leader of two separate realms. Worse, her fellow rulers haven’t ceded victory quietly, and there are others in Isla’s midst who don’t believe her ascent to power was earned. As certain death races toward Lightlark and secrets from the past begin to unravel, Isla must weigh her responsibility to her people against the whims of the most dangerous traitor of all: her heart. The love interests. I have nothing else to say other than Grim is Rhysand from ACOTAR and Oro is Prince Maxon from the Selection if he was OP and had hella magic. That perfectly encapsulates both how their written and the extent of their dynamics. It's so reminiscent of ~other stuff~ it's difficult to see them as their own established characters, especially Grim. They're both like 500 years old and have a rivalry. lore concerning the realms is so silly, it's as if she heard that people were critical of how poorly thought out the curses were and then wildly overcorrected. it's still nonsense, there's just more of it. where were these wild beasts before? why is nightshade exclusively populated by lascivious, hostile unnamed weirdos? what do these rebels think they're actually going to accomplish? Last time I wrote this, I was up to the start of the Centennial. Now my thing about the Centennial is that it's the dumbest concept despite instigating the sequences of events in this book. It's 100 days but in the first 50 days, all the rulers have to do demonstrations for the people of Lightlark to observe. It's supposed to be like the training days in the Hunger Games where the tributes show off their skills to secure donors during the games but the idea falls flat in Lightlark because the people who live on Lightlark don't...do anything. They watch? They attend parties? But their role is so unnecessary. Another component of these demonstrations is for rulers to scope out each other's powers but the "winning" isn't always straightforward. For Grim's demonstration, everyone had to battle it out, but the King of Lightlark, Oro, had a demonstration where everyone had the chance to show their greatest secret. Like?? Oro ends up being the winner of these demonstrations and is allowed to choose who to pair up for the next 75 days.

Success!

Then there’s the logistical issues, such as a half a dozen bridges connecting these islands made of rope (???) that people have to cross on foot (??????) and where exactly these foreign realms that people fled to actually are. And sorry Skylings, Imma let you finish, but your curse being that you can’t fly anymore when Starlings drop dead at 25 and Wildlings have to do cannibalism is absolutely INSANE. Maybe I missed the second part of their curse, but they seem kinda chill with the whole arrangement on the whole. Personally, I'm hoping the following comes true (not because I'm invested, but because I've digested enough of Alex Aster's TikTok content to infer the high likelihood I might be right): Having finally published her first novel, Alex Aster was feeling disheartened. The book had tanked during the pandemic and she had been dropped by her literary agent. Then, on 13 March 2021, she decided to take to TikTok, asking her followers if they would: “read a book about a cursed island that only appears once every 100 years to host a game that gives the six rulers of the realm a chance to break their curses.” One of the rulers must die, the short video revealed, “even as love complicates everything” for the heroine, Isla Crown.