Stephanie Garber fan club discussion

i js finished acftl and i was seeing a ton a ppl saying that is was pretty disappointing, and that it seemed very rushed at the end. i personally think its a 5 star, even tho the romance with evajacks was a little rushed at the end. what are y'alls thoughts?

christina wrote: "i js finished acftl and i was seeing a ton a ppl saying that is was pretty disappointing, and that it seemed very rushed at the end. i personally think its a 5 star, even tho the romance with evaja..."

agh sorry, I'm just seeing this!

Yes, I did enjoy the book a lot and I loved it(I sat for 3-4 hours straight to finish the book in one sitting) I gave it 6 stars when I first wrote my review because I was just so happy at the moment with the fact that EvaJacks got their happy ending and Apollo is dead.

but then, a couple weeks later, I was thinking about the book again and realized a lot of things. Then I changed my rating to a four star read, so I am disappointed at the same time as I am happy and excited.

The book really did feel rushed and wasn't what I expected at all. Jacks didn't even show up until almost 100 pages into the book, which made no sense because the book is pretty much about him and Eva.

The way Eva regained her memories was incredibly disappointing because there was no thrill, Jacks wasn't even around, and her stupid letter was the thing that triggered it all??

Also, it may have just been that I kept a lot of expectations. I thought we'd see ANGST from Jacks. I thought we'd see how heartbroken and angry he'd be when he finds out Eva lost her memories because he may have spoken to her like, "Hey, Little Fox." and she would respond with, "Who are you?"

But Jacks just KNEW that she lost her memories right off the bat and he basically gave up on her.

I loved Jacks in this book too, his affection and love for Evangeline had me kicking at my feet and doing all that, but the so called "Villain" in him was lacking.

Also, SO many things were left out, didn't get closure, and unspoken of. Where did Tiberius, Marisol, and Luc go? They were all crucial characters in TBONA, yet they didn't have a single appearance in this book. What about Evangeline's broken heart scar? Is Castor still going around killing people?

Then there is the fact that Jacks is still a Fate. Fates are supposed to turn into humans once they fall in love with a human, that's their only weakness. It happened twice in Caraval, with The Fallen Star and Dante. That was really a letdown for me because I was so excited to see the heart-wrenching scene where Jacks turns back into a human.

Also, when I got the book in my hands, I was so surprised at the amount of pages. After the last book, I was expecting a longer book because so much has to be covered, explained, and whatnot.

I talk more about my thinking about the book in my review so u can check that out :) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I honestly loved it, I didn’t think it was disappointing at all! (other then it being the last book in the series)

Isabella wrote: "I honestly loved it, I didn’t think it was disappointing at all! (other then it being the last book in the series)"

I loved it too, like I was extremely happy when I read it but there's just so many things that were off in the book😭

I think that Stephanie Garber could have stretched out the ending a little more, but still loved it!

I still liiked it but i think it couldve been a lot longer. There was so much missing. Apparetenly she had written it and then rewrote it too quickly. I wouldve wiated another year if it meant tha it was actualy good

tbh i did enjoy it, but i was also kinda disappointed at the lack of evajacks we got and too much apollo. the end felt rushed and jacks also seemed off character but otherwise i still loved it

there were stuff that I wish it was different but I loved it so much!!

personally i enjoyed it a lot

I enjoyed it, a lot. But as mentioned above there were quite a couple things I was a little confused about. Lots of characters just disappeared. And the whole fate thing was really confusing me - in Caraval it is so clear that you cant be immortal and be in love, and its super unclear is Jacks is no longer immortal, and if he turned back into a human. But apart from that I really enjoyed it! I wouldn’t have minded a little less of Apollo but we got Jacks POV chapters so… I do agree that it felt a tad rushed as well.
I loved this book though, the whole series, and Caraval.

i sobbed when i got my hands on the last book in stock🤭

6 stars fs
idc if it was rushed tbh

I did really like the book and I'm veryy happy with the ending, it was (for me at least) nerve wrecking until the ending.
I can understand what others mean with the unfinished pieces and that it felt rushed.
However, I understand not everything can be covered and some things just aren't that important anymore, it would still be nice for a bit more context sometime. I still liked the epilogue with the story curse pov.

I've been confused about the whole Fate and curse thing since the Caraval series and still am, so I think I'll just never know and accepted it I guess (lol) I mean I understand it enough to understand the story and I liked the story so i'm able to let it slide. So even through everything for me it's definitely a 5 star read!

I really loved this book, and I thought it was a pretty good ending to the story. However, I do agree with the things that have been stated above. {edit: sorry, this is going to be long, I just really love discussing this series and I could quite literally yap for HOURS}

I do think that some of the things should be changed, {haven't read in a while so don't come for me} like, whenever Eva saw Jacks the first time, she should have felt something. To elaborate on that, since Eva was so in love with Jacks, then she should have felt at least something in the back of her mind prodding her saying something like, "Hey! We know this guy!"

And I also agree that when Eva got her memories back, it was somewhat anticlimactic. Personally, I think that it would have been better if she regained her memories in the hollow {"remember little fox" supremacy}. And if Garber wanted to integrate her getting her memories back with the letter, than I'm sure that it really couldn't have been all that difficult to do that, however, I'm not an author so I really have no room to actually speak on that topic.

A really big annoyance, if you will, for me in the book was the lack of closure for the characters mentioned in TBONA. Garber has stated before that she uses "back doors" in her novels that she can "slip through" when needed. Was this just a really obvious back door? I also think that some of these things were left unresolved on purpose so that Garber could go back in the future and potentially create spin-off series with these characters.

I'm also still hopeful that Garber is considering making another book or a novella to "solve" the whole Eva-is-human-but-Jacks-isn't situation. Maybe Garber already expected us to know that once Fates fall in love with humans, they themselves turn human, but it wasn't all that elaborated on and honestly, if you didn't know that prior then you would have the same, if even more questions than we already do now.

And I also agree that this book was slightly rushed. I think that Garber spent a little too much space working on the build up {the first 200-300 pages} giving us too much of an exposition, and leaving the last 100 pages for all the action that would eventually tie up the story. To me, it seems like she tried to pull a SJM {trademark pending}, but failed leaving everything to seem rushed. What I think should have happened was, we got four books instead of three, so that we could have a whole book of exposition. But again, I'm not an author! And I know that there would inevitably be hate for that saying that the expository book was "boring"

But I still love this series with all my heart and it is my favorite book series that I have ever read! And I'm also going to cut her some slack, because no matter how hard you try, you cannot please everyone, and someone is going to think that the book was lacking in something. And hey, at least she completed the series. We could have been left with the emotionally traumatizing end of TBONA, and not known what happened to any of the characters, let alone the less important ones.