i had to dnf at 65 pages and nothing pains me more than this. well, there's one thing: having spent money on this mess of a book. i picked it up thinking it would be a fresh take on new orleans and your typical dark, mysterious tropes, but oh boy did this book not meet my expectations.
in three words: predictable. boring. unoriginal.

the writing was half good but it did not make up for the plot. the main character is so goddamn bland, the antagonist/love interest is your typical bad boy with secrets and so on so forth. pippa? she's so obviously written to support every dumb choice made by celine and help push the story further. and do not get me started on the comic relief-i mean, sebastien's friend.

nothing is new. nothing is breathtaking and unseen before. nothing can convince me that this isn't a fanfiction of the originals that the author did not quite pull off.

the first chapter was promising but everything went downhill from there, surprisingly fast. i've had this crap on my bed stand for a month i mean c'mon i couldn't bring myself to pick it up because i just knew that the plot would not make sense and yet "something" would magically make celine take a step in the right direction. even though nothing seems realistic or even makes sense.

i mean... a very rich, very beautiful (because everyone in here is apparently a VS model) lady spends thousands of dollars on a bunch of handkerchiefs that you made and oh wow you manage to have this nun give you permission to roam free in the middle of one of the most hardcore carnivals in the whole world out of nowhere so you don't break a dumb promise you made to that rich woman? seriously?

and that's why i dnf'ed. so yeah. this sucks so bad and i'm sorry that it does because it could've been great.... but it isn't. periodt.