Sweet Reckoning by Wendy HigginsSeries: The Sweet Trilogy #3
Published by: HarperTeen on April 29, 2014
Genre: Angels, Demons, Paranormal, Romance
Pages: 464
Book Details
Rating: ★★½
It’s time.
Evil is running rampant and sweet Anna Whitt is its target. Nobody knows when or how the Dukes will strike, but Anna and her Nephilim allies will do anything necessary to rid the earth of the demons and their oppressive ways.
The stakes are higher than ever, and Anna is determined that the love she feels will be her strength, not a liability. But trying to protect the ones she loves while running for her life and battling demonic forces proves to be perilous—especially as faces are changing and trust is fleeting. When the Duke of Lust sends Anna’s great love, Kaidan Rowe, to work against her, Anna must decide how much she’s prepared to risk.
In the most sensual and fast-paced installment yet, Sweet Reckoning brings all the beloved Neph together one last time to fight for their freedom.
Sweet Reckoning kind of ended how I feared it would: not that intense. From book one, I expected an epic WAR between heaven and hell. Imagine a war like the one in His Dark Materials. Huge, intense, all-encompassing. Sweet Reckoning didn’t have a war. If anything, it had one small battle at the end. View Spoiler » The lack of a larger, overall war made the whole conflict feel a bit trivial.
I wanted the whole book to be one epic war, but really it was just a lot of waiting, hiding, and romancing.
I hope this won’t be too sensitive of a subject to bring up, but I kind of took issue with the “no sex before marriage” part of the book. Basically the idea is that Anna has to be “pure” in order to fulfill the prophecy. If she has sex with Kaidan, a man she loves, before marriage, she will become “impure” and not be able to fulfill the prophecy. But if she has a halfass, non-legal wedding with him first and then has sex with him, it’s totally fine. I just think that whole idea is ridiculous. Failing to say a few words before having sex doesn’t make you any less pure.
Throughout most of Sweet Reckoning, I sat there trying to figure out if I was enjoying it a bit, or if I thought it was silly. There was a lot of fussing over romance and pregnancies that had me rolling my eyes at times. But I must admit that some parts of the book were enjoyable. Sometimes Kaidan annoyed me, how he was CONSTANTLY thinking about sex. It was hot at first, but honestly it got so old. But other times, I really adored him and Anna together. View Spoiler »
Ultimately I guess I was stuck somewhere between disappointment and mild amusement. I swung back and forth too many times for me to figure out a good “average”, which is why it’s so hard for me to actually rate this book. I don’t think it was bad, it just never got as huge, epic, or monumental as I thought it would be. Plus I hoped there would be more involvement from heaven/angels, but they were absent the entire time. I feel like that entire part of the plot just never developed. It was all about the demons, but I expected the angels to actually get involved at some point, or at least show their faces, and that never happened View Spoiler » .
I just hoped for something a lot more “epic” and it never got there. The romance between Kaidan and Anna remained mostly sweet and fun to read, but I wanted a lot more from the plot/conflict than we ever got.
The Verdict
I was SO disappointed with this one too! I whole heartily agree with you. The “battle” was so anticlimactic and whole PURE AT HEART thing? I almost threw my kindle.
I’m kind of glad to see I wasn’t the only one disappointed.
I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one!! It was such a big disappointment. 🙁 I think it had the potential to be SO epic.
I liked Sweet Evil even though paranormal romance definitely isn’t my favorite genre, but it seems like the rest of the series is a serious letdown. I’m debating whether I should read the last two books or not.
So tired when books have all hiding and no action. Sucks this ended so blah. Happy I didn’t start this series.
I haven’t started this series yet, but…I think I know how you felt about this. I think a lot of YA trilogies sort of end that same way– anti-climactic after a huge build up in book one and two. Anyway, I might still pick it up for the story.
Great review!