I fell in love with this trilogy with the first book and am glad to have continued. After being a bit confused with the writing style at first, changes between character pov was hard to follow, I was ready this time and it was much easier to follow who was being focused on. The main characters have grown and are becoming even more real for me. The situations are getting more tense and the side characters are starting to come more into focus as they start to interact more with the girls. The relationships are deepening and coming to mean more to everyone. I really appreciate that they are growing into their love for each other and not simply in the midst of instant love.
The story begins 2 months after the attack at the end of book one with Cat and Alek both asleep after stopping Jenviet, while everyone waits for them to Awaken. The other girls have been given the whole truth about their situation and have chosen to deal with it in their own ways. Loi ( Laura) has stayed at the castle to wait for them to wake up, while Sian has gone to stay with Citaan and Gredel to help the soon to be parents, and Kassie has gone to the home of her man, Rumal, to get away from the pressure. No matter where they are though, they still want their friends to finally wake up.
When Catherine finally wakes she is told something which changes her way of thinking about her past and present. She at least has a little time to assimilate it all while she waits for Alek to wake up as well. When he finally does it is time to start training in earnest for the attack to destroy an enemy who has no conscious and would do anything to gain their powers. But as they train they are also aware of the fact that they all may not come back, including the men they have grown to love.
I really appreciated the attention to detail, but could have done with fewer training sessions and trips to the practice room. But since we were there so often it would have been nice to get more background on Patel and Rashid since we got so much more into Ignatius and his warped thinking. I do not like Iggy, he is a creepy guy who thinks he is better than everyone and is a nasty kind of voyeur. Once again we end things with a cliff-hanger (not my favorite thing)but it was a good one and I just have to know what happens next. This left me in tears because I so wanted things to be different. I say, go for it.