3 Stars from me.

This is the second book in the series The Magicsmith.

Alex is busy preparing for her upcoming appearance at the fae court. Kai is still there as her teacher, and Chase is spending more time in his more human form around her. Alex and James are dating, but he is cancelling a lot of their dates, and is being very mysterious. Alex is pulled into paranormal fights once again when people start disappearing around James.

There is constant action, and while Alex has developed some skills of her own, she is still sadly outmatched by pretty much everybody around her. Luckily, she has some pretty powerful beings on her side, willing to put up with her smart mouth.

I liked it when James turned out to be not-human, because it explained much of his previous behaviour, and makes him a more suitable potential partner for Alex. I still didn’t really feel the love between Alex and James. In this story Alex expressed more of her ambivalent feelings towards James, and the two of them went to extraordinary lengths to save each other. Maybe it was because we only see the story from Alex’s viewpoint, so we are only privy to her thoughts and her interpretations of James’s actions.

In some instances it was a bit annoying to just have Alex’s viewpoint on the story, especially the fighting scenes. Because she is the weakest, she often gets sidelined during the physical fights and usually only wakes up later after all has been said and done. And then her partners in crime don’t want her to know the details of the aftermath, so they keep it to themselves, which means the reader also doesn’t know what happened exactly.

I did enjoy the story overall, and would love to read the next installment.

I received an advanced copy of the book from Netgalley to review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Was I hooked by this book? Yes, still want to know what’s going to happen next.

Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal