Personal Demon and Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong

Personal Demon by Kelley Armstrong

A Spoiler Free Reread Review

Originally Posted on GoodReads April 28, 2022

This is another one I did not remember anything from when I started my reread. Probably for good reason, there was relationship drama and a forgettable villain who was built up as such a twist… meh. I’m not impressed with either of these things. Hope also seemed better served as a side character than a main one, in all honesty. And Lucas… well, Lucas’ chapters mainly reiterated things about himself and the Cabal that were in other books.

I’m sure I’ll have other thoughts later, but that’s pretty much it for now. Personal Demon was mostly blah.

 

Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong

A Spoiler Free Reread Review

Originally Posted on GoodReads: May 9, 2022

Ugh, Finally! It was about halfway through this book when I was seriously considering adding it to my DNF pile. I didn’t. I don’t regret it, but I didn’t enjoy it. However, if what I remember from the rest of this series is correct, this book has little to nothing to add to the rest of the series. Could be wrong. Haven’t read these is years and apparently I really enjoyed the next three books.

Anyway, Living With the Dead capitalizes on that lovely trope I absolutely hate where no one talks to each other. No one shares pertinent info with the people they really should and, as a result, everyone makes bad decisions that lead to chaos. And not good chaos. Boring chaos. This person runs to that person who tells them nothing and goes behind the first person’s back to talk to someone they won’t name who turns out to be not entirely important… and then there’s the dude who’s unconnected to anyone and gets a bunch of “screen time” to connect with barely-there ghost boy. Just… ugh.

Add to all this the addition of another character who shows up about 75% of the way through to kind of shake up Hope’s world view but also happens to be connected to the “villain” through annoying side character… yeah. I just powered through this book at this point. The big ol’ twist at the end was like… meh. Okay. Fine. Whatever. Big ol’ bow on the plot. Big ol’ bow on Hope and Karl’s relationship.

On to the next one, which I hope I enjoy much more than this.