2 Stars
This series was hard for me. It was okay, but there were a number of issues throughout. Overall, I think this was a bit too juvenile and sweet for me, and would have been a lot better with a bit of spice. The characters, especially Gabriella, come off as so robotic and lackluster. Gabriella is nice - that's the one pillar of her personality. Basically, the characters and plot have 0 depth and felt extremely rushed. It's really odd because I did enjoy the first two books in this series, so I have no idea what happened here.
Is this a romance? Is this just about a girl and her friends trying to kill demons? I don't know, but unfortunately this ended up being super super plot driven, and the plot sucked. The characters just stumbled around trying to find a solution to their demon problem. It dragged on and when any resolution was found it was way too easy - like saving Finn, killing the bad demon lady, etc. It was all SO easy and simple. At the end, Gabriella literally dream walks to the person she needs to kill, comes across him fighting an angel, she TRIPS, the angel dies and she blacks out. Somehow in that like 2 paragraph scene, where she's stumbling and blacking out, she kills the bad guy and does exactly what was needed?
I really enjoyed Finn, the lover interest, in other books. And honestly the plot was much better in the other books too, but anyway - Finn just is hardly in this. He's trying to control the monster within him (the wendingo?) and isn't around for like 30-40% of the book. Then when he does return the romance, relationship development, and anything between him and Gabriella are non-existent.
Also, can I just say the concept of dream walking felt like such an easy writing cop out? Dream walkers apparently can travel and find anyone in their dreams- can harm them, listen into their conversations, whatever. It's another aspect that just makes things way too easy.
As for the other random characters. There are so many angels I can't keep them straight. The author should have made their be like 5 angels, that way we could distinguish their personalities and it would be much less confusing. As is, I felt like I was constantly wondering who was talking and what their powers were.
Overall, this felt like the author needed to tie this series up but was no longer invested in the writing. I completely understand it's so difficult to write a book, I certainly haven't, so I give major props to anyone who is able to pull this together. I just felt like this was a bit of an afterthought like "oh I need to finish out this series, I'm going to just pop this out". I did finish the series, and didn't mind it, but this ending was really disappointing.