A spoilery review of the second and final installment of Lexi Ryan’s “These Hollow Vows” YA duology
Hello and happy Wednesday! Welcome to another book review from yours truly. Today’s topic is the finale of the “These Hollow Vows” duology, “These Twisted Bonds.” We were left on quite the cliffhanger at the end of “These Hollow Vows” and this book throws us back into the action.
Our protagonist Abriella – or Brie for short – is mad. Very, very mad. And who could blame her? The guy (or “male fae” if you will) she married manipulated her until the bitter end, getting her to bond with him and when she inevitably died because of it, turned her into a fae. Since she’s never been a fan of the fae, suffice it to say she was a bit peeved about this. So she ditches her “bonded male”’s coronation to go on a shadowy conniption spree.
When I finished this book, I gave it 3.5 stars and rounded up to 4 – I’m usually nice like that, with the rounding. But going back to it after letting it sit and marinate in my trashy brain, I would like to amend my rating, and go back down to 3 out of 5.
I just. Don’t. Know with this book. I remember finishing it and telling myself I had a decent time, but then coming back to it, I was like, “Did I gaslight myself a lil bit?”
That’s the issue: coming back to these books.
I feel like the author had an ending in mind and didn’t want to change it, so she sort of shoehorned the characters into doing what she wanted them to do, even though some of it was pretty random and left me scratching my head.
I think the biggest head scratcher is the ending. Spoiler Alert ahead for this ending, y’all.
This whole time – all two of these two books – Sebastian manipulated, schemed, stalked for two years, and did all kinds of other icky things to get the crown. To be on the throne and rule both the Seelie and Unseelie courts. And while you can go off about how he’s a horrible fae for what he did to Brie – which, fair – at least I could respect him for doing what he felt he needed to do to be king. It was wrong, and ridiculous, and made him into an asshole, but come on. He’s fae. Isn’t that the point? We follow this human girl and her thoughts (ugh), so we as readers are sort of trained to be like, “Fae, bad. Fae, evil. Fae, killers. Fae, only out for themselves.” Then when one does this, we’re supposed to be like
I guess it fell flat because I really wanted him to just… be that. But the “power of love” for the “super duper special girl” made him, what? Change his mind? Be like, “Nah, not only will I not do this thing that I’ve been wanting to do ever since I was a wee lad, but I’m going to take this here potion that no one thought existed and turn myself into a human.”
Yes, you read that right. This powerful fae, because of his love for Brie, turned himself into a human so the bond between them would break. Not that he would give her the crown, oh no, just that the bond would break and our beloved heroes Brie and Finn can go off and love each other with no guilt. But Sebastian will… still have the crown? And still rule the Seelie court, but as a human? And their big idea is to… glamor him so he’ll look like a fae and hope for the best?
Woah woah woah. So the whole “bringing the two courts together” is no longer a priority? So way back when Brie was human but had the power of the crown that Sebastian eventually took from her… could she have just been “glamored” to be fae and ruled like that? I just – I just – I need more caffeine, hold on.
There are just too many plot holes for me to be satisfied. Like I said above, endgame was obviously Brie/Finn, so a lot of things had to be… “twisted” (see what I did there?) for it to work out like that. I mean, before Sebastian did his whole “I shall sacrifice myself because I wanna be a great king” debacle, Brie and Finn were basically fine with having an affair. She couldn’t let Finn go, wouldn’t let him go. So he’d just be a side piece. But then Bash does his thing, goes, “Ouchie that hurt, oh I guess I’m human so y’all can be together and rule the Unseelie Court while I rule the Seelie. As a human. But no one will know, okay?” and now Brie/Finn can be together guilt – and bond – free. Well, until their own bond.
Weirdly enough, I feel like these books needed another one, yet also didn’t at the same time. A lot of filler that could’ve been trimmed and made the book’s pacing better, yet still not enough backstory for characters I liked more than the main three. Yeah, that’s what I think it is. I liked the side characters better than Brie/Finn/Bash. Like, more about Misha and Amira. What’s their story? More about Amira/Pretha and their previous relationship. Now that felt like a throwaway subplot. There’s bits and pieces of this previous relationship with Amira, the queen of the Wild Fae, and Pretha, the sister of the king of the Wild Fae, Misha. It was this whole big love, but they had duties, so it didn’t work out and Amira married Misha and Pretha married her husband, who is now dead. Both Amira and Pretha are fine with the situation; Pretha even loved her husband. It’s shown that Misha and Amira aren’t love matches and don’t expect to be, but they respect and care for each other a lot, so the marriage works. Aight, cool. That’s cool.
But when Amira and Pretha see each other for the first time in who knows how long, they’re just like, “Oh, hi. Hello, how are you? How are things? Man, this war, huh? These curses slowly killing our children? Craziness.” When that kind of side plot is brought up, I’m expecting… more than that? Longing? Heated looks? Something? It just felt like it was thrown in just to be thrown in and show some queerness amongst the hetero love triangle. Maybe that’s just me. I know the story is about Brie and her relationships, but sometimes I just want to sink my teeth into other characters. Alas, not to be for this one. I mean, I’m thumbing through this book to help with my review and I had to thumb hard to find pages that weren’t just dialogue between Brie and Finn, or Brie and Bash.
The ending was the opposite of the first book’s ending. In “These Hollow Vows” I felt like the ending ramped up so fast and just threw so much at me as a reader. With “These Twisted Bonds” the ending fell flat for me. While I’m a fan of Happily Ever Afters, I know there are some instances where that cannot be. In this book, I felt like it shouldn’t have been. Mainly due to the fact that the way for that to happen was just simply not written. There’s still a civil war going on, right? The two courts are still fighting, right? There’s also the wild card that is… The Wild Fae, right? Did that all go away because Arya was killed?
So many questions were left unanswered because there was cake and it wanted to be had and eaten too.
Also, when it comes to Brie’s sister, Jas: What the heck was that about? The whole story happened because of her sister, and then after the events of the first book they just plop her back to the human realm and go, “Nah, she’s too traumatized, we’ll just leave her here until we need her to manipulate Brie. Again. She’ll be like a pawn. Again.” She’s barely mentioned except for Brie saying things like how she’ll eventually write a letter to her sometime soon maybe probably. Like, it all happened because of her and now she’s chopped liver? *sigh*
I’m just bummed, because of course there is a cycle of a popular book series making such a huge impact on the community to the point where there will be authors who try and capitalize on that popularity for themselves. It happens all the time, it’s not a new thing. It’s fae now, and vampires were huge before. This duology is definitely influenced by A Court of Thorns and Roses, which was fine in its own right. But the world building needs to be more than what “These Hollow Vows” and “These Twisted Bonds” have done in order for that to work well.
That’s my take on “These Twisted Bonds”! Have you read the duology? Loved it? Hated it? Somewhere in the middle with it? Let me know down in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you. Until next time my lovelies!
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