*I received an ecopy of this book from the author. This has not influenced my review.*

This book was great, but I had a couple small issues, so I’ll get those out of the way first and then I’ll get to the good stuff.

The first chapter threw me off because it was like a prologue that jumped forward in time, and then Ch. 2 jumped back to the time where the previous book left off, but it didn’t explain any of that. There was also a new POV introduced that wasn’t in the previous books (Zack’s), and sometimes time would jump back a bit when we switched POVs to cover a time period that already happened in the other POV, so that threw me off too, but I got used to it all after a bit and enjoyed having both POVs.

I also felt kind of confused about things for the first half or so, but I wonder if that was on purpose. The method of withholding information about things until the last minute made me feel tense and unsettled, and I think the characters were feeling that way too. There was a very ominous feel to the whole book.

Speaking of the mood of the book, like the others, there was some darkness and heaviness in this one, bad things happened, and everything wasn’t wrapped up in a neat little package. Except I’d say this was even darker. All the characters had already been so affected and lost so much, and this time they gave up even more. I don’t wanna say too much, so I’ll just talk about how even just the way they gave up memories in order to help Lucy when she needed to feed was unsettling. Her friends did it willingly, so I don’t mean that Lucy did anything wrong, just that I can’t imagine giving up my memories, especially ones as important as what they gave. And memories were not the only thing some of them lost.

But one of my favorite things about these books is how realistically the characters have been affected by the horrible things they’ve been through. They’re just teenagers. And they’ve dealt with things no one should have to deal with. And it has scarred them emotionally. In fact, it’s even scarred some of them physically.

Another great thing is the moral question that comes up about whether or not Lucy should even be alive. A lot of paranormal books are about characters who die and then come back, but they rarely ever question the morality of it. In this series though, Lucy’s undead status has wrought havoc on the lives of her friends, and so she does sometimes wonder if maybe she should’ve just stayed dead the way most people do, and it’s a good question. But of course it’s understandable that she wants to live.

And yet another great (and less heavy) thing was how teenage the characters were. Sometimes Lucy’s humor didn’t quite work for me, but the characters did feel like teenagers, not overly mature. And I liked the little scenes of them all hanging out and just being teens, breaking stupid rules, arguing over music in the car, etc. I don’t know about you all, but, when I was in high school and just hanging out with my friends, we did and said the strangest and most random things. And I feel like that’s something that’s lacking from most YA books.

So overall, this was a darker and even more thought-provoking addition to a unique series!