Holy cliffhanger! This was so good even better then book 1. A few characters I have a deep deep hatred for now.

Still love lore tho

OLIVIA - WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ENDING?!?

I liked this book much more than the first. There was a lot of character development that I felt needed to happen and really kicked into gear in this book. Great series!

*michael scott voice* — my heart soars with the eagle’s crow’s nest.

on every level — physical, emotional, spiritual — i am unwell. this book killed me. it simultaneously had me soaring through the clouds on the back of a sexy crow man and also buried 200 ft below the earth in a deep, irretrievable grave. i loved every second of this. EVERY SECOND. and i may never recover from it.

i hate drawing comparisons to other series, but when i first read HoBW, i said that it reminded me of ACOTAR — NOT in terms of plot, but in terms of how it made me feel. house of pounding hearts? ACOMAF embodied. ACOMAF energy exuding from its every pore. and not in the ‘copy + paste the plot’ way — in the BANTER. in the ANGST. in the TENSION. in the SEXY OLDER MAGICAL SHADOW MAN IS PROFOUNDLY IN LOVE WITH FRUSTRATINGLY OBLIVIOUS ORNERY FMC. in the ways that it kept me up all night squealing and smiling and blushing at every single motherf*cking piece of dialogue between the two characters. if you’re a rhysand fan — and of course you are — you will love the MMC of this series. the only downside to this installment is that fallon, our FMC, goes from charmingly naive in HoBW to bratty and childish in this one — at least for the majority of the story. it’s grating, but it’s an intrinsic part of her character, and though i wanted to punt her off the cliffs of monteluce more than once, i love her all the same.

i died. i’m dead. do not bring me back until house of striking oaths drops, please, because i have suffocated to death on the sheer amount of butterflies that lived in my stomach and esophagus over the 48 hours i devoured this.

this book picks up almost immediately after HoBW ends, and is chock full of all of the will-they, won’t-they teasing, patient-but-possessive flirtations from our MMC, and 'i hate you but i can’t stop thinking of you' stubborn refusals from our FMC that you could ever want. the tension it creates is literally so thick and delicious you could eat it with a spoon.

there are a few surprises in this one that i struggled to make sense of, but that could easily be my one-track-mindedness when it came to the romance. because while this story has a solid musical-chairs type of plot when it comes to the various kingdoms’ thrones, it is predominantly a romance. the entire countries of luce and nebba could sink into the sea for all i care, as long as lore and fallon are mind-flirting.

and for those of you lamenting the spice levels in HoBW (me, most ardently), pick up some gatorade before you dive into this one. for electrolyte replacement. for all the sweating you’ll be doing.

5 stars, easily, happily, and with eternal gratitude to my crow queen olivia for the ARC because truly if i had to wait one more day to read this book i would have combusted from anticipation. immediate add to favorites shelf.

if you see me on here rereading this next week, mind your business. i am but a moth to a flame crow to a shiny, pretty object.

This was a really enjoyable sequel! Im glad it wasn’t as long as book 1 because I don’t know if I could have taken anymore of Fallon’s inner monologuing about how she hates Lore. I am all down for a slow burn but holy hell this was CRAWLING. It ended up being worth it though because the spice was spicing. Definitely felt like a book 2 with a lot of plot set up for an epic finale. I’m looking forward to book 3!!

*** ARC Review ***

Release Date: January 29, 2023

Wow. House of Pounding Hearts made the slow pace of House of Beating Wings, book 1, worth it! We get to dive more into this Fae/Shifter world that Olivia has created, we learn more about Lore and his mysterious crows, Fallon becomes a more confident FMC, and the romance is filled with tension and slow burn which is worth the wait payoff.

In House of Pounding Hearts, we learn more about the war between Fairies and Crows, and who the main players were/are. I'm really enjoying this world and the characters who fill it up. Besides Fallon and Lore, each character has a back story that Olivia is able to twin into the oveall plot. There is also a found family aspect in this group of characters that I adore.

Lore and Fallon were tension and slow burn that I LOVED. The pay off was so worth it and Lore is definitely up there on my book boyfriend list. Their relationship was sweet and spicy, but also was balanced well between the overall plot for me.

The ending though...that was just rude! There were some things I did not see coming but it will make the next and final book that much more interesting.