What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone Series)

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I saw the plot-twist coming and while it was predictable but it made me excited for what will happen in the sequel. Trigger Warnings: grooming, verbal and physical abuse (not the male lead), blood, assault of a minor, ritualistic sacrifice, suicidal thoughts, graphic violence & sexual content, cliffhanger THE SETUP AND initial chapters were so good! I felt really invested in this world and wanted to see Estrella break free from her unfortunate situation. And then things got even more interesting once the Veil shattered and she would up on the run... up until we meet Caelum. I don't think I've ever been less excited about a MMC. This starts up right after the cliffhanger in book 1 and the twists/reveals kept happening throughout the book and the spice was 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥. This was a really enjoyable read. I loved the world building in this book, it feels like it is set in the middle age with the whole book feeling a bit like ACOTAR from the start. The FMC Estrella kind of reminds me of Feyre in the beginning with her wandering the forest at night, which is forbidden by the king.

If you’ve read the From Blood and Ash series by Jennifer Armentrout you’ve basically already read this book. Their attraction is immediate and almost like love at first sight? But this book is an absolute slow burner and it was sweet, sweet torture. But it was worth the wait, because look at those spicy quotes. And also, lots of forehead kisses. AND this book might now have one of my favourite ‘who did this to you’ scenes 🫠 During her journey Estrella meets Caellum, another fae marked who agrees to help her. After all, he needs to run too. Only trouble is the longer they run together, the more alluring Caellum becomes, and Estrella doesn’t know quite what to make of things if she’s to guard her freedom and her heart. Oh and the forced empowering quotes that I didn’t like in the first one? They are still here folks🙃

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I needed more detail on the actual mechanics of the world, but it seemed that everything just moved so fast there was no time for details. Especially I would say Estrella. She was so annoying. The point was to make her soft, but she’s tough, and how she is this “feminist” and whatever. But she was annoying, and gullible, naïve. She blindly believed in her brother, left her mother behind without too much thought, did all these spur of the moment actions, while continuing to believe the fae are bad. ALSO THE FACT SHE NEVER THOUGHT HE IS HER MATE?????????? HOW DENSE DO YOU HAVE TO BE? Shes just very dense. Very gullible. I don’t know how else to explain her. Just very annoying. And the narrative felt like, im not like other girls, from both mcs actually. What Lies Beyond The Veil’ was so much more than I thought it would be. In the beginning the story of Estrella’s life was just horrible. The world she lived in definitely made my skin crawl. And there is a lot of mystery about ‘the Veil’ that fascinated me. Slowly on, we learn more about this world Harper L. Woods created I was totally hooked and desperate to learn more. I continue to be mesmerized by the world Harper has built of fae, gods and primordials. The world building is excellent and brilliant and I really loved the mixture of magic/fae with gods/primordials/religious culture.

I still have my hopes up for the sequel because this book has the potential to turn out to be a favorite of mine. Caelum didn't hesitate to make his intentions clear to Estrella and I love when men do this — no beating around the bush and he never once pushed her. unfortunately for me, i found this one both too long and too fast-paced in term of what happened to the characters' feelings and development. on the one hand, this book is literally just the journey to the fae realm which was incredibly boring. on the other hand, in terms of actual days it's too little for what actually happens with feelings and how the fmc feels about the mmc, for how the feelings progress and where we end up. but most of all, it was just really boring and it felt stretched out. i can't help but think the pacing for the story overall would have been so much better had this book been half or a third in size and the feelings development had happen through-out more MOST OF THE BOOK was sooo boring. Like most of it was just them walking around, hiding, getting into a skirmish, walking around again. The ‘point’ of the story and overall goal wasn’t super clear and wasn’t developed enough to keep me interested.This book was gross, and I don't mean the porn-heavy bits, although those were also plentiful and some of them quite gross, but not all of them. It was gross how the MC was character-assassinated in the interest of serving the author's goals of writing more sex scenes. It was gross how both violence and death were fetishized. It was gross how trauma was used as a tool by the male MC to get what he wanted from the female MC. This is a character who is supposedly centuries old, behaving like a cave man, storming out in a huff and unable to control basic emotional impulses. Leaving it to his comparably infantile 'mate' to soothe his needs with sex even when she's terrified of him. Sorry but I couldn't get past how unbelievably stupid the whole thing was. The main character, Estrella? I’ve never wanted to strangle someone. She was so annoying with his inner monologue of “he’s gonna sleep around” and shit. GIRL YOUR BROTHER TRIED TO KILL YOU MAYBE FOCUS ON THAT. Not to mention how dumb she was, HE IS OBVIOUSLY NOT HUMAN.