Review: Dead of Winter by Kresley Cole

Dead of Winter

Kresley Cole

(The Arcana Chronicles #3)

Publication Date: January 6, 2015

Hardcover, 336 pages, Simon & Schuster

Genres: YA, Paranormal

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Can Evie convince her rival loves to work together? Their survival depends on it in this third book of #1 New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole’s Arcana Chronicles, a nonstop action tale of rescue, redemption, and a revenge most wicked.

Heartbreaking decisions

Evie was almost seduced by the life of comfort that Death offered her—until Jack was threatened by two of the most horrific Arcana, the Lovers. She will do anything to save him, even escape Death’s uncanny prison, full of beautiful objects, material comforts…and stolen glances from a former love.

Uncertain victory

Despite leaving a part of her heart behind with Death, Evie sets out into a perilous post-apocalyptic wasteland to meet up with her allies and launch an attack on the Lovers. Such formidable enemies require a battle plan, and the only way to kill them may mean Evie, Jack, and Death allying. Evie doesn’t know what will prove more impossible: surviving slavers, plague, Bagmen and other Arcana—or convincing Jack and Death to work together.

Two heroes returned

There’s a thin line between love and hate, and Evie just doesn’t know where she stands with either Jack or Death. Will this unlikely trio be able to defeat The Lovers without killing one another first...?

My Review

What can I say about this book without giving away massive spoilers…? I guess I’ll just have to be as generic in my descriptions as possible. But I’m not sure that’s entirely doable for someone like myself. So please, try not to read my review unless you have already read at least the first book in the series. Thanks!

Kresley Cole does an amazing job when it comes to building worlds. The Arcana/P.F. world is so unique and awesomely insane that I don’t think I would have even thought about something like this in my wildest dreams. However, as much as I love Kresley’s writing, both adult and YA, I think she went a little overboard in this book with the amount of teenage love/lust angst in the love triangle she has going on.

Evie is supposed to be a sixteen(or is she seventeen now?) year-old girl. And love triangles can sometimes be wonderful additions to a storyline. I mean, who doesn’t like hunky man-flesh in their books? BUT, Evie’s character took things waaaaaay too far. She was constantly thinking about “Should I be with Jack?” or “Should I be with Aric?” or “Aric will be lonely…” or even “Jack is sooo dreamy” I just felt that Evie needed to grow a pair, especially when they kept forcing her to choose. She needed to say, “Look here. I’m a strong, bada$$ woman who doesn’t need your manly-macho crap!” Alas, she never did say anything like that.

Plus, I really don’t understand the appeal of Team Death. He’s a douche. A douche who seems to like to prey on women. He reminds me of Warner from Shatter Me. Everyone likes him, but they forget how despicable he was. Sure, you can feel sorry for him, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior. Whereas Team  Jack has been busting his butt to help Evie and everyone else. I think her decision should be obvious. (But as I said earlier, she should have just told both of them to BACK THE *bleep* OFF! After all, the apocalypse was going down; they had more important things to be worrying about.)

I loved the new characters Kresley added. These books have sooooo many awesome people with unique powers that it’s like a dirtier (as in actual dirt), grittier X-Men! I could totally see myself reading spin-off books about the other characters in this series. I’d just be bummed about there being a lack of Jack. Even the villains in this book were so weird and creepy that they made me love them (see what I did there?).

Moving on from all that, I had only one other problem with the book—how short it was. This issue was helped by the book’s ending. I mean, WHAT THE H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS, KRESLEY!? What kind of ending was that?! You did that to us in the second book and then we had to wait more than a year to get any sort of closure! I can’t go through that again. (Also, there’s an event that I just KNOW is going to happen and have been waiting for since Endless Knight but still hasn’t come to fruition yet. I can’t wait another year for this reveal Kresley!)

In the end, I love most of the characters in this world and every time I pick up the sequels in this series it’s so easy to remember what happened. That being said, I’m more than ready to pick up book #4 any day now. Preferably yesterday.

*Note: I borrowed a copy of this book from my library. This in no way altered my opinion/review.