A rare phenomenon where the last book is actually the best book out of trilogy. Colour me impressed!

A satisfying ending is something I rarely find, but this is exactly that. ( )

I’m giving this book more of a 3.75 rating because while I enjoyed it I didn’t feel like it was quite a 4 star book.

When Villains Rise picked up right up where the second one left off and provided all the same dark twisted moments that the former two books did. However I feel like this book lacked in plot. It didn’t really feel like it had any true plot of its own and mostly spent the entire time wrapping up all the loose ends without adding any higher stakes. (I guess you could count Kovit being added to the DUL but that was already established at the end of book two). And in general that wouldn’t necessarily even a bad thing as there was plenty of potential left with the plot lines of stopping Nita from being hunters, getting Kovit off the DUL list, dealing with Frabricio and Nita’s mother etc. However despite such high stakes everything was... easy. All of their problems were very easily handled given the characters skill set. It left much to be desired. An example of this was the death of Nita’s mother. I would have loved a huge show down. Instead we got her conveniently blown up when Nita researched how to make a bomb. Kovit got shot? Not a big deal because he was conveniently drinking vampire blood wine earlier. The plot just felt like it could have been handled better.

Now there were also many things to love. I adore the dark story arc throughout this series and how truly terrible these characters are. It’s so refreshing from the self sacrificing hero narrative. In general I just have a serious appreciation for these characters even if I did find Nita a little too revenge hungry. And speaking of the characters that brings me to the relationship between Nita and Kovit. I did shop there two but I found the route of their relationship to be refreshing. While also appearing to be asexual and aromantic (rep that is rarely seen much less within the main characters of a book) it was so refreshing to see Nita and Kovit figuring out what they meant to each other and deciding that while they didn’t feel romantically they cared about each other deeply. Platonic relationships do not get the credit they deserve and are often seen as less important than romantic relationships. So to see two characters to have such a deep platonic relationship was so nice.

Overall: It was a pretty good finale and had a few twists I didn’t see coming. I just wish that things hadn’t played out so easily or at least had more satisfying conclusions. ( )