Hi friends, happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all having a good week so far. Today I’m going to be posting my review of Jeff Giles’ novel The Brink of Darkness.

You can read my review of book one: The Edge of Everything

The Brink of Darkness by: Jeff Giles: After the events that ripped Zoe’s life apart, things are starting to go back to normal. But her beloved, X has done the unthinkable, given up his freedom and returned back to the Lowlands where he’s from. He’s gone back determined to release the hold the lords have over him for good. The journey isn’t easy and he’s met with new challenges that could make or break him. This novel had a good premise; the thought behind it made sense but it was just poorly executed. From the get-go, the reader was reminded why they didn’t care for the first novel, events would just happen or change without any preamble and the reader would have to go with it; characters would be introduced by just showing up and the world building was still lacking. The reader understood that the Lowlands were a place like hell, but we never really got much more than that. The pacing was alright, but by the end it was a slog to get through, especially as everything ended so perfectly and certain plots just felt so cheesy and unrealistic. This was also filled with a lot of exposition that the reader could have done without; it was to get us to understand the characters better, especially the ones that are new this book, but it took away from the actual story that was happening. This sequel followed X’s character more than it did Zoe. Zoe was so unlikeable in this novel, she honestly had no redeeming qualities. She was reckless in every decision she made and all of her decisions were based around a guy she’s known for five minutes. The secondary characters, her friends and family, were all worried about her, but there’s barely any mention of them and then they’re just okay with all her decisions because X is a great guy and they’re in ‘love’. As for X, we got to know him more; in the first novel he was a very flat character who wasn’t developed. In this one we got a little more; although most of his character was filled out by finding out who his parents were. Overall, this could have been better; there was so much potential for this, but it fell very flat.