Name: Sorrow & Strangers
Series: Avalon University #2
Authors: Jeanette Rose & Alexis Rune
Publisher: Simon Maverick (US)
Format: eARC
Thank you to Simon Maverick and NetGalley for the early copy!
Genres: Adult, Dark Romance, Fantasy, Dark Academia
🌶️: Lots of Spice, all the spice 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
😭: Ugly sobbing…
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
Fear. Fury. And Fire.
To Know is Never Enough.
Summer Tuatha De Daanan reluctantly returns to Avalon University for her second year after spending the summer with her vampire best friend in Draculea. She’s a shell of her former self, and the peace promised to her has never felt further from her reach. All Summer wants is to keep her head down and get through the year cloaked in her depression, but looming threats linger, and she quickly finds herself thrust into a dangerous position once again; entangled with a friend turned enemy, the protector of her beloved family, and the target of two very powerful kings.
Unwilling to suffer any further loss, Summer must push through her emotions to prepare herself for the enemies who threaten everything she holds dear. Through runic training with the revered and brooding Headmaster Emrys, combat with the aloof and strong-willed Max, and improving her mental walls with the dark and mysterious stranger, each step pulls her further from the edge of despair. Yet, nothing will be simple for Summer, and the more she trains, the more she discovers who she truly is, forcing her to confront her inner darkness. The beast within that purrs for her enigmatic stalker.
A darkness that is waiting to be explored. A darkness that will not be denied.
Review:
Thank you again to Simon Maverick and NetGalley for the early copy of Sorrow & Strangers. Sorrow & Strangers is the sequel to Blood & Betrayals, and there may be some spoilers for B&B in the below review. Any spoilers for S&S if they are mentioned will be hidden as normal. Please read your trigger warnings before going into this series, especially S&S as there is very raw exploration of grief that may be triggering for some readers – I say this as a reader who expected it and still really struggled with it.
We don’t pick up right from where we left off – in fact we’re rejoining our characters a couple months after the ending of Blood & Betrayals. They’re a few months into mourning and grieving and it’s not going well, for any of them really. I spent the first 40% of this book pretty much sobbing or at least crying some amount because of the grief explored. Not only the grief, but also for the friendships that survive the grief.
I did rate the book down partially because of the grief, and I have written a bit as to why. It doesn’t have spoilers, but if you want to read why then clicking here will show it.
Grief is painful, and I do shy away from it a lot more so in realistic books for my own journey with grief is one I struggle with still, I’m more okay with it in my fantasy… but Jeanette Rose and Alexis Rune wrote such a powerful, raw and real exploration of grief that I found it particularly difficult to get through. This is aboslutely not a fault of the book, I just had to pull myself out of it over and over again to separate the grief of the character from my own. As I said, I spent almost half of this book on and off ugly sobbing because of how it reminded me of my own grief. So, I say this with warning because I’m over a decade since my loss… if you have experienced a loss recently then this book might not be for you right now. Take care of yourself.
The friendships we loved in B&B are back, though a little rougher thanks to the pit they have found themselves in since losing Connor. Things are a little messy, but we see Alice, Max and Rafe really step up a notch (in my opinion) in Sorrow & Strangers – Alice to the nth degree because she really has a lot on her plate. I love Alice – she really is the best friend, I can understand why she appears on the Character ARCs!! But an unexpected LOVE of mine was Rafe! I liked him in B&B absolutely, but the journey and story he has…has got me gagged. I’m so excited to see where his story goes!!
We also have a new character… and dare I say she may have the potential to actually be my new favourite character? I’ve been seeing the authors discuss the Character ARCs over on Threads and the amount of people that thought she may be one of the ARC covers… I have hope for D&D that she may get the cover treatment!!! I’m very happy with the introduction of this character, and I can’t wait to find out more about her story!
The biggest mystery in B&B is that of the Stranger’s identity and I loved that even though we see a lot more of him in S&S, his identity is still very much a mystery and a point of hard limit for Summer. If you had theories in B&B, like I assume you did because the rest of us did, then prepare to be adding to your cork board with my red thread because wow do these authors want to make us work for this knowledge…
I will end this review by saying that although I did drop the rating a little due to my struggles with the grief, most of the drop came from the pacing and spice level. In B&B I originally dropped my rating due to spice, but couldn’t stop thinking of the characters and the story so raised it up. However there was just so much spice in S&S that I don’t think it’s something that I can just ignore. If you’re falling out of love with spice, then S&S might not be the sequel you pick up immediately.
The other issue is the pacing, B&B never felt like I was reading a behmouth of a book, but S&S absolutely felt that way. Originally I thought it was because I was still struggling to read, but that simply wasn’t the case. My focus was back and I was reading no problem, it just was a bit difficult to get through some times but once again the love I have for the characters would keep me reading.
So, with that said I dropped the rating to a 4 star – the characters, the ongoing mystery and story lines are absolutely enough to keep me coming back for more. Hopefully by the time D&D rolls around I’ve found my love of spice again because if I have learned anything, it’s that spice is probably not going anywhere!
“It’s okay to be scared. But you don’t love him less by living.”
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