The Guinevere Deception

3.5 stars — I started this one by listening to the audiobook, but it really did not capture my attention in that format. It wasn’t that the narrator was bad, I thought she was quite good. But I think there was something about the narrative that just didn’t work for my distracted mind. So I switched to reading my Kindle copy, and things went much better. I still found it hard to get sucked in to this one. There were moments that I absolutely loved! But there were so many secrets, so much mystery, and from our heroine too…it just had me losing interest instead of drawing me deeper. I knew this was a series, so I wasn’t surprised that there were still questions unanswered at the end of this one, but I *might* have needed a bit more… It’s like, part of me is interested in where this series is going, but there’s another part that could totally see forgetting about it and never finishing it and not clamouring for more. I think another problem for me was that there wasn’t a strong romance component. Which it doesn’t have to have, by any means…but I wonder if I’d become invested in Guinevere with someone then I’d have been more invested in general. I had suspicions and reservations about SO MANY characters, and it turns out with good reason (for most of those characters), that in the end I just kept myself apart from it. The strongest component for me was wholeheartedly the friendships that Guinevere develops with so many strong and different female characters. And with that, the few twists and turns of diversity that I DIDN’T see coming AT ALL! I don’t want to give anything away, but there were a few surprises that just absolutely delighted me. Which is why I will inevitably round up. Without all of this, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed this book that much. One other thing that delighted me was the way that magic was represented, specifically how Guinevere used her magic. I appreciated that there was a trade off — that using magic wasn’t without consequences for her. That was fascinating. SO yeah. I have suspicions about a few things, but I almost wish I’d gotten a few more hints before the end. I don’t know what I think about how everything turned out.