Heart So Fierce and Broken

I enjoyed this installment! It was even better than the first and it left me guessing until the end. I can honestly say I was not at all expecting the ending. While I was able to guess some of what happened throughout the book, the ending was still a shocker.

One complaint I have about this book is the lack of focus on Harper and Rhen. While Grey's story is vital to the overall story, we missed a lot of what happened with characters we came to know in book 1. I also do not feel like Rhen was written as I would expect based on his character in book one. There were many aspects of book 2 that just did not seem to fit how I see his character. I understand he has been going through a lot but he was almost seen as the villain in this book and I did not agree with that.

The second book in the Cursebreaker series, focuses more on Grey and new characters. It's told from Grey's point of view, as well as Lia Mara's. I liked hearing the continuation of the story in their voices.

I have to admit, I listened to this mostly as background noise while getting ready for work. I don't have much to say about it. I did like the new relationships and the decisions the characters made.

It sets up the third book nicely.

“Ah yes, the most dangerous person at the party is always the girl sitting alone with a book.”

This book was so good. I loved every part of it, even though at first I was so mad when I found out it was going to be from the points of view of Lia Mara and Grey, not Harper and Rhen. But then I understood why and I absolutely loved it. It was even better than the first book!

Lia Mara is such a great and well written character and everything about her is amazing. I am glad that she and Grey found each other, when they didn't even know they needed it.
Rhen makes me so sad and all his decisions are so harsh, I couldn't believe what he did to Grey. His only friend, the person who was always there for him, how could he forget all of this in such a short time and become ruthless when it came to Grey? But I feel like Harper can truly help him see the better part of things, even though some things will never be forgotten.

I cannot wait to see if Grey and Rhen will find their way back to being friends or... anything else than enemies. And I truly hope that Lia Mara and Harper will become friends, because they are so much alike and I believe they would make a great pair.

[7.5/10 Rating] [Spoiler-free review]

At first I wasn't really feeling this book as I didn't like how the story was going, but as I read, I found myself liking the characters more, which helped to keep me going. The romance was kinda predictable (I saw it coming from miLeS away before it even began), but was still a good read. I wasn't able to sit down and binge it one-shot as I wasn't really a fan of how the story was progressing, but it was still interesting enough to keep me reading for “short bursts of time”. Like the first book, Rhen's personality was kinda hard to understand??? (Are you caring or cruel??? Why did you suddenly become cruel??) It was really quite confusing. I also did not expect Grey's POV to be written like that as, I understand that he's human and all but he feels like a completely different character from the first book? I'm just gonna assume that its his character development... Lia Mara on the other hand, however, grew on me quite a lot (I was really “eh” with her character beforehand).

OVERALL:
A good read, but I find that it's a bit sad that the main characters of the first book were kinda ‘tossed-aside' ? I understand why this had to happen (I mean the 2nd book was focused on Grey's story, not Rhen's) but I still believe that their story cannot be ignored? As a reader who read the first book and the second in succession, it was quite strange, as the main characters who were so vital in the previous book were practically non-existent in this one. Harper felt quite useless and irrelevant in this novel which was :/
But despite everything, I did enjoy the book. Great series, so you should pick it up! I will be reading the 3rd book in hopes that it might be better!

ALSO: THIS BOOK GETS BONUS POINTS FOR NOT HAVING A LOVE TRIANGLE because I absolutely hate love triangles.

Book Three Please.

The moment I finished A Curse So Dark and Lonely, I knew I needed A Heart So Fierce and Broken right then and there. And I was a bit skeptical about the new introduction of a point-of-view character because I had hopes for a certain guardsman and princess to be the end game. But by the end of this book, I realized that I loved it even more than the first one! I was actually excited because the release date was January 7th of 2020 and that is the Macedonian Christmas and I bought it sadly it took me way too long to read it.


A Heart So Fierce and Broken introduces Lia Mara, daughter of the queen of the bordering lands, a nation determined to take on Emberfall even if it means war. On her own, I really loved her character and my only real hang-up was that I spent how many pages in the first book getting to know Harper so when I first heard Grey would be a main Point of view in the sequel, I thought it would be him and Harper.
I'm glad it wasn't.

Lia Mara has been the cast-off her entire life but she finally gets to shine. I loved watching this intelligent young woman leave her family's shadow and really hold her own. And Grey was amazing as always, his internal conflict between duty and what he thinks is right was balanced just so, not overwhelming the story with unnecessary monologues and such.

But while I loved Grey and Lia Mara, even more than Harper and Rhen, bringing them to the forefront seemed to take away from the first couple. Rhen, while I wasn't a huge fan of him, was tolerable in A Curse So Dark and Lonely, but in this sequel he was cruel. His actions didn't match up to the character we spent hundreds of pages getting to know in the last book and I didn't understand why he changed. And Harper, who I thought was a fantastic heroine, all but drifted off the page. I felt like their characters were sacrificed for the sake of Grey and Lia Mara which makes me wonder where things are going in the next book.

Speaking of the story, as much as I wanted this sequel (mostly because of Grey), I didn't understand where the story could go after ACSDAL (which, if you cut a single moment at the end, could have worked pretty well as a standalone). But Kemmerer found a story and I wasn't 100% sold on it the whole time. It felt like two conflicts going in the beginning and I sat around waiting for something to happen on either front. This book almost feels like a “response” to the first one's “call” (action/reaction, cause and effect) rather than a continuation, if that makes sense. I definitely wouldn't recommend reading A Heart So Fierce and Broken without reading A Curse So Dark and Lonely. The backstory established in the first book is too important in the sequel. But this book very much felt like a reaction rather than its own story.

ALL THAT SAID, yes, I actually enjoyed this book even more than A Curse So Dark and Lonely. Which seems impossible based on everything I just said but it's the characters. Lia Mara had my attention from the first page and only continued to keep me reading, and I was already a fan of Grey from the last book so not much work was needed there. Despite not feeling like much really happened in this 400+ page book, it was the little things that added up and I am definitely interested to see how these two books come together in the third installment!

I honestly cannot decide if I liked this book or not. It was not what I was expecting at all. It didn't follow Rhen and Harper, so you have no idea what's going on with them throughout the whole book. I know some people love Grey, but he's just kind of boring for me, so following him was just eh. I think an opportunity was missed as well to develop more relationships between the group, including Noah, Jake, and Tycho.

The ending also made me furious. But it's also what's making me pick up the next book. All in all, I still love the setting and the characters, but not sure I liked this book.

So ok...I read this all today...did not mean to lol. I could not put this one down. I really enjoyed the pace and feel of the characters. My heart feels for Rhen and the decisions he feels forced to make. You see Harper throughout but she is not the focus and I appreciated the indepth look into the world around and outside of Ironrose Castle.

I loved getting to know Grey better and sympathized with his struggle in how to decide what path to take. Lia Mara is a pleasant surprise and I loved her instantly, as I did her sister.

The ending leaves me devastated yet hopeful for what the next book will bring.