*I was given an ARC of Everything That Burns in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Flatiron Books and Gita Trelease.*

This review contains spoilers pertaining to the series end (in the last five paragraphs of this post) please be aware of this before reading. 

Synopsis: 

Everything That Burns is the second novel in the Enchantée series. Set in revolutionary Paris, the streets are alive with mobs and riots. Camille Durbonne gambled everything to keep herself and her sister safe, but this safe may not last much longer. 

After a public speech from the King, magicians have now been outlawed and painted as evil to the people of Paris. As a magician herself, Camille is constantly working to keep her identity secret whilst also finding a way to get herself and her fellow magicians out of Paris. 

She is also using her skills as a pamphleteer to help a bunch of girls who live under a bridge in the Pont Neuf. Each girl has a powerful story to tell and Camille decides that she will be the one to do it. Unknowingly at the time, she infuses the pamphlets with magic and worries that she will be found out. 

Review:

I’m not going to lie, I struggled to get through this. This is probably mostly my fault as I just could not concentrate on the story, but at the same time, the book needs to hold some of the blame. Not much really happened until around halfway through, well nothing too exciting that is. 

Don’t me wrong it is still a good book and I would recommend it to anyone who has read the first. But is this going to be one of my favourite duologies? No. 

There was something about the writing style that I found hard to follow sometimes. This being that there were a lot of French phrases used and I had no idea what was being said. I realised once I had finished that there is a glossary at the end, but this does not work when reading on a Kindle. 

Obviously, it makes sense to have the inclusion of French phrases and I don’t want to sound like I am being ignorant. So please don’t think I am. It just made the story a little disjointed for me. 

With that being said, the scenery descriptions were incredible and I could easily picture every scene. Let’s not forget the beautiful clothing that I wish I could wear myself. 

My favourite part of this book was definitely the characters. Each was more charming than the last. The introduction of the girls under the bridge was a fantastic way to bring in exciting characters; however, I feel that they could have done with more development. I wish you got to spend more time and that they featured more heavily int eh story rather than it just being their lives being spoken about through others. 

Towards the end, the tension of the book explodes and it is non-stop action. Well right up until the closing chapters. I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t say that the end was extremely lacklustre. 

Throughout the entire book, the idea of saving every magician in Paris is so built up that I really wanted to see it happen. I especially wanted to see how they were going to make it happen. Well, that never happens. 

Camille gets arrested for being a magician and somehow gets away from her unavoidable death. Once she is out of Paris alongside her sister and friends they run away to England. Not another thought was given to Paris, its magicians or the revolution that is happening. 

Honestly, for the most part, the revolution was very much a second thought throughout the entirety of Everything That Burns. The first book ended with the revolution beginning and it felt like it was going to be a large part of this. Maybe other people don’t feel this way. But I was expecting the guillotine to come out and heads were going to roll.

It saddens me to say that this book did not live up to expectation. Considering this is the second in the series everything took too long to get going and I had to push myself to finish it. 

With that being said the concept of this book was a fantastic idea, and I loved all of the characters and setting descriptions. For those reasons, I am giving Everything That Burns a generous 3/5.

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Like this post? Why not read this one too? Monthly Wrap-Up: January 2021