I LOVE this book and Tana French is one of my fave authors, but I never recommend this particular one to people because the ending is sooo unsatisfying. I understand it as a choice and respect the balls it took for a debut author to do that, but I also get how deeply frustrating it is.

When I was 15 I would've lived for those books. I read much worse faerie fantasy trash back then.

I read them last year (a crusty dusty 29 now) and they're honestly entertaining. I'm not asking for YA romance to be filled with depth and meaning, I want a bunch of drama and action with an interesting world and premise.

I love silly, trashy, shallow thrillers. If they take place at a college, amongst the obscenely rich, or in a small town with seeecrets, I am 100% onboard no matter how dumb the plot is. My fave thing to do in the summer is blow through a bunch of them while at the pool.

Kingdom of Heaven theatrical cuts a HUGE part of the storyline and made no sense without it. The director’s cut is actually a great movie and highly underrated.

She’s not oblivious. She made her expectations extremely clear to Tom- to her their relationship was casual. His mistake was thinking she either wasn’t serious or would change her mind. He did not tell her he felt that way, so from her perspective she thought he was fine with their relationship as it was. That is not her fault and she did end their relationship when he made it clear he had different expectations.

She was characterized as being outgoing and friendly. Those traits don’t equal “leading someone on”. She was intended to be a deconstruction of the “manic pixie dream girl” trope.

I've read them, they're actually pretty good! They do lean into the Christianity at some points but they aren't as egregious as most Christian lit. The author balances it well with Celtic druid beliefs and I don't remember them being too over the top religious (I haven't read the whole series in a long time but I did reread Taliesin last year).

Taliesin was probably my fave of the series, it has a lot of interesting detail on Celtic life, druidism and also has an interesting beginning storyline set in Atlantis. I enjoyed it, and the Christian stuff only comes up towards the end and is fairly easy to skip if you want.