Name: This Cursed Light (The Last Finestra #2)
Author: Emily Thiede
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Date published: December 2023
Genre: Fiction, young adult, romance, fantasy
Pages: 437
Rating: 3/5
This review contains minor spoilers.
When the gods make the rules, the players must choose: Sacrifice their love to save the world, or choose love and let it burn?
Six months after saving their island from destruction and almost losing Dante, Alessa is ready to live happily ever after with her former bodyguard. But Dante can't rest, haunted by a conviction that the gods aren't finished with them yet. And without his powers, the next kiss from Alessa could kill him.
Desperate for answers, Dante enlists Alessa and their friends to find the exiled ghiotte in hopes of restoring his powers and combining forces with them to create the only army powerful enough to save them all. But Alessa is hiding a deadly consequence of their last fight - a growing darkness that's consuming her mind - and their destination holds more dangers than anyone bargained for. In the mysterious city of the banished, Dante will uncover secrets, lies, and ghosts from his past that force him to ask himself: Which side is he on?
When the gods reveal their final test, Dante and Alessa will be the world's last defense. But if they are the keys to saving the world, will their love be the price of victory?
- From Goodreads.
While the first book was not perfect, I had fun reading it, and was looking forward to reading this second book, but unfortunately I did find this one disappointing. The plot felt like it lost momentum and while it could have gone down a lot of different interesting paths, which was why I was so curious to read this book, I wasn't very excited by the path it chose to take. It did still manage to have quite a dramatic climax, but I was just left feeling like the story could have done more.
I was still invested in the two main characters' journeys and their romance, I hoped that they could work through their problems and find a happy ending together, although I did feel that we spent so much time on other characters that we did not get to follow their character development as in deth as I would have liked. Also, apart from the main two characters, I didn't like many of the others, or find them interesting or distinct enough from each other. I thought Kaleb had an interesting start to his character development in the first book but not much happened with him in this book, and I did not really understand why Alexandra's brother was forgiven so easily for what he did in the first book so I didn't really enjoy his parts in this book. Along with that, one of the new characters, Talia, was too unlikeable for me, I think she was supposed to be a little unlikeable while still being a character you could understand, but I just found I didn't enjoy her presence in the story.
I can imagine other people enjoying this book more than me, and it did still have occasional good moments, but overall I don't think it lived up to its potential and it didn't follow on from the first book in the way that I hoped it would.
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