From the Bookshelf of SOS: Serious Overload of Series…

Diamond Fire (Hidden Legacy, #3.5)

Ilona Andrews

Start date: December 1, 2018

Finish date: December 31, 2018

Discussion: Book of the Month

Why we're reading this: Voted as our "Most Popular Books Published in November 2018" December BOM (two-book tie)…more
[close] Voted as our "Most Popular Books Published in November 2018" December BOM (two-book tie)

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 14 topics — 256 comments total

Book of the Month

This topic has been closed to new comments.

* BOM: Group Read History [2025]
By Steph , Serious series addict · 10 posts · 22 views

last updated 23 hours, 41 min ago

* BOM: Comments & Suggestions
By Steph , Serious series addict · 38 posts · 229 views

last updated Mar 15, 2012 06:15PM

showing 10 of 25 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Nov 22, 2018 Katyana rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: uf, young-adult, short

This was pretty disappointing to me. That said, it did exceed my expectations. Despite my utter love for Ilona Andrews, my expectations were rock bottom because I just don't like YA ... and because I was disappointed at the change to MCs for the series. There's just so much left undone with Rogan and Nevada. We've barely begun exploring her powers. And Caesar and the evil cabal, that's Rogan and Nevada's arc, and it's left open. I dislike that so much more than I can even begin to express. I hat This was pretty disappointing to me. That said, it did exceed my expectations. Despite my utter love for Ilona Andrews, my expectations were rock bottom because I just don't like YA ... and because I was disappointed at the change to MCs for the series. There's just so much left undone with Rogan and Nevada. We've barely begun exploring her powers. And Caesar and the evil cabal, that's Rogan and Nevada's arc, and it's left open. I dislike that so much more than I can even begin to express. I hate that the arc will likely be wrapped up by her sisters, because it makes no sense that Rogan and Nevada would just drop out of that picture.

But as for this novella, it gets 2.5 stars from me.

Nevada was way out of character - this bridezilla nonsense was ridiculous. Nevada in her own trilogy was, above all, incredibly practical. She's uncomfortable with money, and particularly with Rogan's vast wealth. I just don't buy her suddenly becoming this monstrously picky asshole. I get her firing inept wedding planners - she doesn't tolerate nonsense, and so the first one belittling her and the second one lying to her, yeah, she's going to fire them. But the rest of it, silly.

Rogan was also out of character. This man is a control freak of the highest order, and here he's just meh about everything. (view spoiler)

I don't generally like the YA voice, and I read very little of it - only things that trusted friends have highly recommended. Because the general narrative voice is one that I despise - the young girl who is smarter, better, more entitled, oh-so-precious ... ugh. Now on a scale of 1-10, I'd give that voice a 5 in this book - she's not as annoying as she could be.

But like with most YA, the adults leave a child in charge of a serious situation and it just makes no sense to me. I buy her hunting for the tiara, because meh, petty theft, sure, put the kid on it. But when (view spoiler) Then, even worse, Nevada's power was undercut by Catalina discovering that hey, she could do what Nevada could do, but better (because of course it's better, that's always how YA is, they're so much better than everyone else and why can't people acknowledge their amazingness!!) She doesn't have to pry secrets out, people are happy to tell her! And they conveniently forget all about it afterwards! Gee whiz! I hate that shit. I hate undercutting your previous MC to set up the new primary, and it felt like that's entirely what this book did. Rather than building up Catalina, we had to make Nevada look bitchy and not-that-impressively-powered (view spoiler), while Rogan is inept and careless. Really?

Overall, I'm just sad because this series was one of my utter favorites, and now I have no enthusiasm for the next trilogy at all. And I'm sad because that seems to be the case with both of my favorite IA series (because no, I don't want to read about Julie in the KD world ... I find her to be utterly horrid). I don't know that I'll continue onward in either series.

*sigh* ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Apr 11, 2019 Shawna rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobook-library, pnr-angeldemon-fae-magic-witch-misc, i-read-library, brothers-sisters-cousins-family, mystery-intrigue-espionage-subplot, pnr-paranormal-romance, i-read-listened-to-audiobook, anthologies-novellas-shorts, urban-fantasy, all-work-no-play-on-the-job-romance

3 stars - Paranormal/UF Novella

4 likes · Like · see review

Sep 07, 2019 Midu Hadi rated it liked it

Shelves: 100-200-pages, read-in-september, reviewed, 2018, series, us-author, read-in-2019, middlers, mysteries, short-story

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Like · see review

Nov 10, 2018 Susan Jackson rated it it was amazing

I loved this! And I’m very happy to see that we will get more of Catalina in the future and hopefully the rest of the kids (Arabella, Bern, etc) too. I’m probably going to do a reread of the whole series.

Like · see review

Nov 08, 2018 Steph rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: author-웃, series-ended, author-favorite, series-i-love, author-유, shorty, series-completed, year-read-2018, favorites-2018, favorites-all-years

3 likes · Like