Book Review: One with You (Book #5 in the Crossfire series) by Sylvia Day

I should probably start out this review by saying that I originally wasn’t planning to read and review One with You any time soon, but reading the second book in Christina Lauren’s Beautiful series, Beautiful Stranger, and writing my review for the book really got me thinking about the Crossfire series again quite a bit, so I decided that it would probably be very fitting for me to go ahead and read One with You now. That being said here are my thoughts on One with You.

Because I feel like I’ve been repeatedly disappointed by Sylvia Day, and the Crossfire series as a whole, I’ve definitely been putting off reading One with You ever since it was released back in April of this year. Since this is the last book in the series, I was really hoping that I would enjoy One with You, and that the Crossfire series would end on a good note. Sadly, that definitely didn’t happen. While One with You does have some elements that I enjoyed, I was ultimately extremely disappointed with the book, especially when it comes to the fact that this is the final book in the series. To me, One with You came across as being the book equivalent of a TV show having a season finale where the writers have the season end with multiple cliffhangers, leave storylines open to be continued in the following season, and introduce whole new storylines, because they’re confident, or at least fairly optimistic about the show’s chances to be renewed for another season, only to have the network cancel the show. However, the fact that this or any final book in a series would have that kind of vibe to it is absolutely infuriating to me, since an author has the luxury of knowing whether or not a book is actually going to be the final book in a series. If an author who’s writing a book series knows that a book is going to be the last book in the series, they can and should write it as such, which Sylvia Day unfortunately didn’t do when it comes to this book.

One of the many problems that I’ve had with the Crossfire series is a lot of the writing and character development for Gideon, or rather the lack of character development and growth for him throughout the series. As I’ve read each book in the series, I constantly found myself thinking that I didn’t fully understand why Gideon is the way he is. Sure, we were given some information throughout the series about his past and the abuse he suffered when he was younger, but the character development and growth for Gideon still always felt rather incomplete, in my opinion. I feel that way even more so after reading One with You, and the fact that the series ends without Gideon truly working through and overcoming all of his issues, particularly his sexual parasomnia. The lack of character development and answers regarding Gideon’s past is one of the reasons why I would liken One with You and the Crossfire series as a whole to a TV show that’s abruptly canceled, leaving various storylines unresolved. However, I’ll admit that there was one “revelation” that’s revealed in this book, which I’ll talk about later on in this review, that does make me feel a little more understanding when it comes to the fact that Gideon doesn’t truly work through all of his issues by the end of the series.

Cress: This sure isn’t your typical Rapunzel retelling (My thoughts on book #3 in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer)

Let me preface this review by saying that out of all the fairy tales that Marissa Meyer incorporated into The Lunar Chronicles, the story of Rapunzel is definitely the one that I know the least about. That being said, I feel like the fact that I wasn’t very familiar with the story of Rapunzel actually enhanced my enjoyment of Cress in a lot of ways. When I was reading Cinder and Scarlet, I found myself constantly thinking about the original stories of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood and was frequently wondering how Marissa Meyer might or might not incorporate and reimagine various elements from those stories into the series. However, when I was reading Cress, I just enjoyed it as its own unique story without ever really comparing and contrasting it to the story of Rapunzel.

Before I go any further, I’d like to just go right ahead and say that Cress is definitely my favorite book in the series so far. If you’ve read my review for Scarlet, you may remember that one of the things that I talked about in my review is that the book wasn’t quite what I was expecting when it comes to it serving as a follow-up to Cinder and a continuation of the series. Cress, however, was much more in line with what I had originally been expecting the books that followed Cinder to be like prior to actually reading Scarlet. One of my biggest criticisms about Scarlet is that I felt like Cinder was kind of hogging the spotlight throughout the book, and when that wasn’t the case, the book felt like too much of an ensemble piece for my taste. I really feel like Marissa Meyer should have focused at least a little more on Scarlet and Wolf in Scarlet than she did. While Cress is also very much an ensemble piece, I think Meyer did a much better job of putting most of the focus of the book on Cress, as well as Thorne since he’s Cress’ love interest in the series.

One of things that I have to give this book a lot of praise for is the fact that the story had really great pacing, in my opinion. There was a lot of action and different things happening throughout the book, but the story never felt like it was moving too slow or too fast. Plus, all of the storylines that were going on throughout the book were very interesting and engaging, so I never found myself getting bored, or having trouble paying attention to the story as I was listening to the audiobook version of Cress.

Crescent “Cress” Moon Darnel is definitely a very likable and interesting character. In a story that’s full of fantasy elements, she really felt like a real person and a well-rounded character, especially when it came to her feelings for Thorne. Given the fact that Cress had lived a rather sheltered life, being stuck in a satellite in space for pretty much her entire life, it made a lot of sense to me that she would have somewhat of a naïve view of the world and the stories that she had read about Thorne in the news. She believed that Thorne had had noble reasons for the various questionable things that he had done over the years, often breaking various laws in the process, when in reality Thorne’s motives for his actions had typically been rather self-serving.

Captivated by You: Gee, I really wish I could say that I was “captivated” by this book, but… (My thoughts on book #4 in the Crossfire series by Sylvia Day)

Let me start out by saying that originally I wasn’t planning to read and review Captivated by You any time soon. However, I ultimately decided to go ahead and read it now because I wanted to have a book to read while I was working on my review for the second book in Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series, Scarlet. Since my reviews for Bared to You, Reflected in You, and Entwined with You, have all gotten a lot of page views and the fifth and final book in the Crossfire series, One with You, will be coming out in a few weeks, I decided that now would be a good time to read and review Captivated by You; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.

Right off the bat, I have to say that I unfortunately hated this book for the most part. If you’ve read my review for Emma Chase’s book Appealed, the main problem that I’ve had with this series as a whole, but especially when it comes to Entwined with You, is that it really feels like Sylvia Day is trying to cram as many sex scenes into the books as she possibly can, at the expense of having good character and story development in the books. I wish that I could say she did a better job of providing character and story development in this book, and to be fair, she did in some ways, which I’ll get to later; but for the most part, believe it or not, the whole issue of Day focusing more on having lots of sex scenes in the Crossfire series than she is on having good character and story development is even worse in Captivated by You.

Honestly, there are so many sex scenes throughout the book that the writing for Captivated by You as a whole felt extremely repetitive in the end. Despite the fact that the sex scenes are pretty steamy and well written, they actually become rather boring after a while due to the high number of sex scenes in the book. The way this book is written, it’s like Sylvia Day was thinking about the expression, “sex sells” as she was writing it, and she just went completely and totally overboard when it came to incorporating sex scenes into Captivated by You. If I had been reading a physical copy of the book instead of listening to the audiobook version like I did, there’s a really good chance that I would have started skimming through the sex scenes after a while. I think if I had done that, I might have been able to read this entire book in just a day or two, because that’s how many sex scenes there are in this book.

I’ll give Sylvia Day credit for not making Eva and Gideon’s relationship feel like one giant never ending angst fest in this book like I feel she has in the past, especially when it comes to Reflected in You. Eva and Gideon did seem happier together in this book compared to how they’ve been other times in the past. Plus, it was definitely interesting to see them deal with the fact that they’re secretly already married, while everybody else thinks that they’re currently just engaged and in the process of planning their wedding. However, the fact that Eva and Gideon are constantly having sex with each other really made me question how much depth their relationship actually has. The way Eva and Gideon act with each other most of the time makes it seem like they can’t be alone together for more than five minutes without them having sex. That really makes me wonder if their relationship really has what it takes to last for the rest of their lives. After all, once they’re old, their sex drive could quite possibly diminish, or it might become physically challenging for them to have sex with each other. If that were to happen, I honestly don’t know what they would do when they’re spending time together since sex has always been such a huge part of their relationship.