Hi friends, happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all well. Today I’m posting my review of Rachel Hartman’s sequel to Tess of the Road, In the Serpent’s Wake.

You can read my review of book one: Tess of the Road

In the Serpent’s Wake by: Rachel Hartman: Tess has always been a girl on a mission, and this time she’s out to save a friend. Traveling with a crew, including a countess and new-found friend, Marga, and her brother-in-law, Jacomo; each one of them has their own agenda when it comes to finding a serpent who lives at the bottom of the world. The sequel to Tess of the Road… where Tess is still on the road. This wasn’t exactly what the reader thought they were going to get when it came to the sequel. The way Hartman ended the first novel, made it seem like Tess was going to go back home and confront a lot of the emotions and trauma she harbored, after learning so much about herself on this self-discovery journey, but instead, it felt like Tess was running away yet again. The reader had a hard time figuring out what the point of this novel was because Tess is on an expedition with a handful of new characters (and some we met in the first book), some we are still meeting over halfway through the novel, and it’s more to benefit them and not Tess. This novel flipped back and forth between different points of view, which had the reader confused half the time because the new characters felt underdeveloped and just added for the sake of creating this novel. There were way too many characters who felt like they meant nothing. This was still well written and it was fast-paced, which is why this novel was rated higher than two stars, but a lot of this lacked direction and depth. Wherein the first novel, it went on and on, but for a purpose, for Tess’s growth and character, this one went on and on, for no reason. Even as this came to an end, it felt like we needed another novel so that Tess could actually set out to approach her sister and settle everything once and for all, but it seems unlikely we’re going to get that. In the end, if you loved the first one, you may not love this one; it’s not bad, but it’s just disappointing and doesn’t deliver on what felt like mattered most.