Deceptions by Kelley Armstrong

 Spoiler-y Reread Review

Okay, so, Deceptions is the book where everything hits the fan. It ramps up to 11 on the Fae side of things, the whole Matilda thing is completely explained, and there is more than a hint at a love-triangle brewing. I’m personally not happy about that last one, but the rest is pretty good. It’s a little hard to believe that these books have only taken place over a few weeks, at most. I will warn right now that, due to the nature of this story and the way I feel about it, this review does contain spoilers.

Cult. Deprogrammers. Because Olivia broke up with you and you can’t take “no” for a damn answer. WTF James. My hatred is clearly justified. James just keeps getting worse. It’s gross. This feeling doesn’t change because of what happens to him mid-book. Still gross. Don’t do this shit. Take “no” for an answer, regardless of how you feel about the situation.

I really hate the whole Gwynn, Arawn, and Matilda thing. It’s incredibly cis, het, misogynistic BS. “Ah yes, Gwynn and Arawn keep make pacts about Matilda without letting Matilda know and she’s expected to just… go along with it? But she doesn’t know so… wtf even. Oh, and these pacts affect EVERYTHING because weird Fae reasons.” Some polyamory would have done these knuckleheads a world of good. Oh, and maybe TELLING MATILDA could have been part of the plan????? I’m happy Ricky agrees with me, at least as far are Gwynn and Arawn being pricks.

Also “Neither will accept that, because it dilutes your power and they both want it all. They will insist you choose.” Which, like, okay… but also, no. Olivia’s the one with the power, she should insist right back about a “Persephone solution,” as she calls it. This is so dumb. Tristan coming into the mix doesn’t help either, really.

All this is not to say that I’m not happy with the lore dumps. I am. They were interesting. All of them. I think I most enjoyed the visions at the mansion and the bits at the end. Getting the visions explained was also a bonus I’d forgotten happened.

Deceptions was a fun ride, despite my issues with the romance plot. It did have a bit of a feel of finality, if I’m honest. I know there’s more to go with the Olivia’s parents’ trials and maybe fully shaking out what’s going to happen with the whole Matilda thing, but the ending really felt like an ending. That’s not a bad thing, by any means. It’s actually quite nice to have a definitive ending and not being pulled along to the next book as strongly as the last two. 

Favorite Line

"I like the foreign names. It makes these conversations mildly less ridiculous." - Olivia Taylor-Jones

In Other News

I finished another OviPets project. This one is MetalSeadramon for my Mega Digimon Project line. Took me exactly 8 months.