I absolutely hate disliking books. It honestly causes me physical pain because I love stories and I want to love each story I come to. But every so often I pick up a book that is just too painful, frustrating, or disappointing to like — and I’m so very sad that this has been the case with The Golden Enclaves. Especially because I absolutely adored the first two books and had every expectation that I would love this one. 
Unfortunately, there are a many number of things, characters, story elements, and plot choices that I found underwhelming but what really disappointed me the most was that all of the character development we saw in El over the course of the first two books was completely undone in the first half of this one, and then not adequately built back up again by the end. This left me feeling like I didn’t know her, which is not how you want to feel at the conclusion of a series. So many of the things I had come to love about her (such as her resilience, her discipline, her strong foundation of morals, and her journey of personal growth that allowed her to let people in) either faded into the background or completely flipped. She lost her voice, her passion, her ferocity, her community, her drive. And that just wasn’t realistic, interesting, or relatable for me. Not only that, but it made me really really sad. 
The wrap up regarding the creation of enclaves and how that is tied to malia was interesting — but the conflict with Ophelia, the revelation of the prophecy, and the resolution weren’t enough to make up for the other ways I was really disappointed. 
Finally, I love Orion. And I truly believe he deserved better. Not just from the other characters, but from the author. 
Honestly, really heartbroken with this one, guys.

It's been a while since I read book 2 in the series and I contemplated re-reading before picking this volume up because when I initially tried to read it I was overwhelmed.  Book 2 leaves on a cliffhanger and book 3 starts right after and so you see the immediate events and it was a little difficult to jump right it.

I thought that the series was quite solid.  Book 3 really tied it all together and bits that were resolved were introduced in book 1 so it was quite good closure to see actions that have consequences and a resolution all together.

Some of the reveals were also top notch, since there's (in hindsight) a lot of foreshadowing but to be able to put it all together wasn't something I managed.  I don't know if it was because of the gap between the books and it would have been obvious if I read them in closer succession but I was satisfied with how it came together.

I’m honestly kind of sad that I had to give this only three stars because I had such high hopes for this book. The first 50% of this book I was bored out of my mind but I just kept hoping that it was going to get better. It did get better. It really picked up and was really really good and made me laugh out loud a couple of times….for the last 50% of it. I feel like the first 50%. might’ve been better summarized in a paragraph or two so that way we could just jump into the story. It might’ve made for a really short book but at least I would not have had to sit through 200 pages of awful.