If she was going to get murdered, she‘d like to do it in Paris. Or Tokyo.

She was smart.
But smart kids can still be plenty stupid.

Sure, it had been hard to keep her worst impulses in check these past ten months, but it was better than being a lit match in a town she‘d already doused in gasoline.

“The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.”

I‘m speechless.
I never wanted this book to end.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

He thought: You are entering a cycle of your own destruction, the wheel of your own fortune, which will rise and fall and so will you. You will deconstruct and resurrect in some other form, and the ashes of yourself will be the rubble from the fall.
Rome falls, he wanted to say. Everything collapses. You will, too.
You will, soon.

“Our world is dying,” he said, and took a seat, ready to put himself to work. “It‘s up to us to set it right.”

“It was real for me!”
“It was real for me, too.”
Most of it.
Some of it.
More of it than he felt it wise to confess.

“Whatever you created would have to be—“
Perfect. Imperfect, but under perfect conditions.
Impossible, then.
Or was it?

The perfect team for what?
“For anything,” Atlas said. “For everything.”
He meant: Let‘s take this bloody mess and all its damn books and do something that‘s never been done before.

“The Society is dead; long live the Society.”

They were stars who refused to die out.

“It is the remarkable who suffer. The unremarkable are passed over, yes, but greatness is not without its pains.”

In his mind, Tristan manifested a new talisman; a new scroll to recount his new truths.
Part one: Your value is not negotiable.
Part two: You will kill him before he kills you.

“You're a fire hazard, Rhodes,“ he said. “So stop apologizing for the damage and just let the fucker burn.“

“Warfare is like a compromise. Both parties must lose a little in order to win.”

“Every single one of us is missing something. We are all too powerful, too extraordinary, and you don‘t see it‘s because we‘re riddled with vacancies? We are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal—that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn.”

She seemed to mean one thing—If magic is the arrow and we are the archers, how much control do we have over its flight?—but appeared to have ultimately asked quite another.
Is magic the tool, or are we?

She understood, in a way the others did not, the existence of polarities, the mysticism of opposition: that acknowledging the presence of life meant accepting the presence of death. That knowledge necessitated ignorance. That gain meant loss. Ambition suggested contentment, in a sense, because starvation implied the existence of glut.

“We all have our own curses. Our own blessings.” Callum‘s smile faltered. “We are the gods of our own universes, aren‘t we? Destructive ones.”

“But she still loves me differently; falsely. She loves me because I put it in there. Because I made myself her anchor to this life, and therefore she loves me only as much as she can love any sort of chain. She loves me like a prisoner of war.”

If this world felt it could take from Reina, so be it. She would gladly take from it.

Depending on how you viewed it, Persephone had either been stolen or she had run from Demeter to avoid being used. Either way, she had made herself queen.

“Someone always gains,” said Reina, “Just as someone always loses.”

“Power is not meant for those who misuse it.”

“I am not good,” Dalton told her. “No one here is good. Knowledge is carnage. You can‘t have it without sacrifice.”

“You know why you don‘t understand me?” Parisa answered Reina‘s thoughts, stepping closer to lower her voice. “Because you think you‘ve figured me out. You think you‘ve met me before, other versions of women like me, but you have no idea what I am. You think my looks are what make me? My ambitions? You can‘t begin to know the sum of my parts, and you can stare all you like, but you won‘t see a damn thing until I show you.”

“I know you‘re suspicious of me,” Callum said, before amending, “Of everyone.”
“I find people to be largely disappointing,” Tristan commented.
“Interestingly, so do I.”

The world was mostly entropy and chaos; magic, then, was order, because it was control.

“You‘re good, Rhodes,” he reminded her, leaping to cut her off before she got needlessly defensive. “You‘re good, okay? Just accept that I wouldn‘t bother hating you if you weren‘t.”
“Varona, that presumes I care at all what you think.”

Really, there was nothing more dangerous than a woman who knew her own worth.

“How long would it have taken you to start a war, do you think? Or to end one?” He paused, and Callum said nothing. “Five minutes? Perhaps ten? How long would it have taken you to kill someone? To save a life?”
[…]
He did not say: Four minutes, thirty-nine seconds. That‘s how long it would take.

“More interesting than the game is always the players, you know.”

The moral of the story…

Similairly to the last volume, this part of the series was a lot more serious and in general a lot deeper (if that makes sense) I still really enjoyed and couldn't stop reading it. Though it still had some cute and lighthearted moments, it tackled more serious issues and I think it is important for this kind of representation to be shown as well.
3⭐️

Since I read this book online, I'm unsure about when I really started reading or finished reading this volume in the series. It is definitely a more serious book, which tackles issues including mental health and eating disorders. I still enjoyed the book and still love the character but this book was definitely heavier than the last two.
3⭐️

This book was absolutely stunning! The diary entries and drawings, the writing and the designs; I am simply speechless. I REALLY enjoyed this book and loved the characters as well as the idea and overall experience of reading the journal. I also love the message behind the story and the idea that you can choose your home and your family and find a place where you belong.
4⭐️

Some stories spill out in a wave. Others come in drips. And now and then, a story sits pooled somewhere, waiting for you to find it.

If death is part of the cycle, then so is life. All things fade, and all things flourish.

“Olivia,“ he says, “you are a Prior.“

“You are nothing,“ he says, in a voice like frost.
“I am a Prior,“ answers Matthew, standing his ground.

Similarly to the first part, this was a really quick read and I still LOVE all of the characters. I really enjoyed reading something lighthearted and fun because the last couple of books I‘ve read have been dark and quite tense, so this was a nice break. (Also the copy I had included a mini comic about Tara and Darcy, and let me tell you it was soooo CUTE)
4⭐️

This is a really quick read and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was very fun and lighthearted and cannot wait to read the next book as well as watch the Netflix series coming out soon! Overall, the characters were wonderful and I wish them the best in the coming books.
4⭐️

“I will be right here,“ he says. “When you come back.“
All her life, Olivia has wondered what it would feel like to have a family.
And now she knows.
It feels like this.

Traps are like locks. They can be picked. They can be opened. A trap is only a trap if you get caught.