Of Ash and Embers Hardcover – Big Book, 1 December 2022

Of Ash and Embers by Jenna Wolfhart is book two of The Mist King series. After the failed stabbing of King Oberon Tessa is stuck in the dungeons. The Mist King (Kalen) comes to her in her dreams after her stabbing of him also failed. The mists start to creep into King Oberon’s lands, causing panic. But Tessa is uncertain of why the Mist King is coming for her.The Lovely: The plot and tension were excellent and steady all the way through the end. Again, the events toward the ending shocked me, even though I was waiting for the author to try to pull a twist. There was more character development for Tessa in this book, and I love her relationship with her love interest. Their relationship isn’t linear and they have their bumps, which makes this believable.The Mundane: The world building improved in this book as we finally start to learn who was telling the truth (or are they). There is still a good amount of lore pieces going on and you don’t find out how they all fit together in this book.The Dreadful: NothingRating: 5/5 starsRecommendation: Ok, how did the author pull one over on me again? Eek! I’m even mor in love with this series. The author’s storytelling is phenomenal and I’ve added her other Fae series to me #tbr. This book ended on a cliffhanger. Tropes included enemies to lovers (again), found family, and banter.

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Tessa is in the dungeons stolen back by king Oberon while she is in there so is her sister Nellie and best friend Val and their mother. After Oberon torturing Tessa, Tessa put Oberon’s court against him and found a way to escape along with her family. Due to what happened to escape the entire city was utter chaos.This story kept me at the edge of my seat! Besides the escape from Oberon, she reunited again with Kalen and the mist guard and you could tell the people of Teine went through so much they looked resigned and accepted any fate that would be given to them.The slight reprieve in the Castle with the ball and the gowns was wonderful!! Especially when things got spicy 😏🔥Oh Kalen you really know how to swoon a woman. I can’t get enough of the nickname he gave Tessa. He calls her “love” and I hear it with a deep husky voice in my head 🥵Loved the banter when they went after Oberon and Kalen helped Tessa with training. Definitely did not see that plottwist come in especially since Tessa thought always so highly of her father but the mind can do funny tricks to protect you from harm by making you forget it.Definitely starting book 3 right away because that Epilogue makes me wanna know what Kalen is going to do and how Tessa will react towards him since she has the biggest temper and always think the lowest of herself. I hope she will believe him and see reason and on the other hand I hope from his side that her fears aren’t going to happen.Spice level 🌶️🌶️

I liked the second installment in this series. I absolutely loved the multiple points of view. It was nice to get into the heads of the other characters, and it was nice to see what had happened hundreds of years ago. Despite what other people said about the pacing being slow, I thought it moved quite fast. If I were so inclined, I probably could have finished it in a weekend, if not a day.There were some things about the characters that did annoy me in the book:𝐓𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚She didn't get any better with this book. I found myself rolling my eyes with things she said and did. There was quite a bit of repetitiveness with her thoughts. For instance, towards the end when she was injured, she kept going on and on and on about how her shoulder hurt, her head hurt, and her body ached. We know that already. You can stop telling the reader. In one of her dreams, when Kalen told her he was the one who unalived her father, she was livid and they both tried to unalive each other. Then in another dream, he somehow shows her the situation of what happened and why and she was all gushy, and feeling hurt for him and she "understood" his pain. Uh, ok? She also kept having "flashbacks" of her sister being unalived, and had to constantly "remind" herself that she was there. I also found the realization that she was part God of Death to be a bit interesting, but that just ended up being another thing for her to think about constantly. I realize that the author tried to make her a strong person as she was always "itching for a fight", but in my opinion, it just didn't work. She was more annoying and impetuous to me. Running off to do something rash without others to back you isn't "strong", it's stupid. I did like her chapters, but I just can't "warm up " to her.𝐊𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧Again, loved his chapters. I adore this character. He's dark and destructive but also shows a warm side. It did annoy me how, yet again, he kept calling Tessa "love" all the time. I know it's a term of endearment, it just got too repetitive after a while. I liked the flashbacks in some of his chapters as it gave the reader an insight into things that had happened and 𝑤ℎ𝑦 they happened. One thing I didn't understand, though was his mother. In his flashbacks, she felt kind and loving towards him but when she was in the body of Queen Hannah, she called him the Mist King and would not speak his actual name. And she said it with much disdain. It confused me as to why she suddenly hated him, when she made him when it was he whom she made make a binding vow to unalive anyone who thought to release the gods. That made little sense to me.𝐎𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐧He was an interesting character, and it was nice to get a POV from him. The whole reason behind why he needs a mortal wife every seventy-five years made more sense, though he was a bit of a psycho for putting Bellicent's body into the mortals, even though I could understand why. What I disliked was towards the end when he was obviously dying as the God of Death was taking over his soul/body or whatever, but he suddenly turned into a sap. What I don't understand is why, when Tessa said she was going to unalive him and had the Mortal Blade, he didn't tell her 𝑤ℎ𝑦 that would be a bad idea. He just basically said it would be a bad idea. If he just told her the reason, the whole release of the God of Death could have been avoided, but then there wouldn't really be another story, or another reason for Tessa to cry and think (constantly) about how now Kalen had to unalive her because of his vow because she released the god.𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬I liked the relationship between Kalen and Tessa (yay for him putting up with her being so annoying!), and I liked the intimate scenes. What I disliked, however, is that Tessa, who was a virgin, seemed to know how to do everything. She knew what she liked, and clim@xed a lot. Also, being her first time, she really enjoyed it. Now, I don't remember much of my first time, but I do remember that it was not enjoyable. At all. Nor did I clim@x because I had no idea what liked. In the first book when they were getting hot and heavy Kalen asked her what she liked and she basically said "I don't know. I'm a virgin."When Kalen had the ball and Asher went after Tessa and tried to unalive her, and Kalen ended up unaliving him, I felt as though that was unnecessary and added to provide some sort of unnecessary drama. It also felt like it was there to propel the mortals and some fae to leave the safety of where they were.The addition of Tessa's mother, Val, and Nellie felt very unnecessary. There was really no reason for any of them to be in the book. Most of the time they weren't in scenes anyway. I feel like they were thrown in to show some "family dynamic" and to pass the bechdel test, which is some arbitrary test that someone came up with that said women need to have women friends. Anyway, Tessa's mother, whom she portrayed as being nice and sweet and caring, turned out to be a beast. Sure, she wanted to unalive Kalen, but you would think that once seeing how he was towards Tessa and how Val and Nellie trusted him would have been enough to make her see that he's not a bad guy. I was actually glad that she ran off and got eaten by the Pooka. I just wish Nellie and Val had did too. And again, her mother being unalived gave Tessa yet 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 reason to go on and on about how things are bad for her, she's a bad omen, only bad happens blah blah blah barf.And the ending. I found it odd that Kal and his party disappeared when they were supposed to be going after Tessa. And of course, now that she released the god, she's worried--ad nauseum--that Kal is going to unalive her because of that so 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒 that will probably be another thing for her to go on and on about, and now she's going to be on her own and I'm sure that when Kal and company find her she's going to be over dramatic about all of that.Now, with all of that said, I do like the story. Yeah, yeah, it sounds hard to believe. I like Kal's point of view the most (of course, I also like Kal LOL). I can tolerate Tessa's point of view, as long as she's not doing something stupid (which is rare) or constantly complaining about the same things. It's to the point where I'm rolling my eyes and thinking "We get it. Move on." The plot is interesting. There's a lot of action that keeps the pace flying and makes the book hard to put down. I am going to buy the next installment when it comes out (I was very bummed to see that it's not out yet, and the only version on pre-order is the kindle. I'm hoping that it comes out in paperback).

This book series is absolute amazing. 10 out of 10.