This book has Middle book Syndrome

I want to start by saying that I was such a big fan of Touch of Power. I would actually go as far to say that Touch of Power was my favourite book I have read so far this year. So as you can imagine I was quick and eager to pick up the next book in the trilogy. A Scent of Magic was so disappointing. I am hoping that this book was just setting up the third book so I will take a chance and read the final book. I really hope that this book is just suffering from middle book syndrome and I really hope that the third book redeems the series for me. To start, the first 4 chapters are sumarizing what happened in A Touch of Power. In addition, there was a significant amount of repeating what happened in the first book throughout this book. Overall, the narration was great as Zackman has perfected her voices for the characters. I liked Zackman's narration in the first book so I had no issues with it in this book. Other than that, that was about all I liked about this book. I am not a fan of the whole Damsel in distress thing. In the first book, Avery was such a strong character and in this book, she was very much a pon that was passed around to the different male characters. I don't want to say much more than that as I don't want to give away any spoilers. With that being said I will say that I felt there was not a lot of character development in this book and the relationships that I enjoyed in the first book were not present in this book. In addition, the relationship between Kerrik and Avery borderline's on abusive and not endearing. He is so possessive and controlling over her. Overall, this book seems young. The characters are supposed to be adults but the decisions and actions they make are not well thought out and I would argue can be immature. In my opinion, Synder did not take enough risk in this story. Everything that happened seemed convenient and there was not a single thing that surprised throughout the novel with the exception of 2 parts. Scent of Magic did not make me fall more in love with this story and its characters, in fact, it had the opposite effect. This book had a completely different plot than the first book and in some ways, the storyline felt random. As a result, I am hoping that it comes together in the final book because as of right now some parts of the story seem random and unnecessary. There were a lot of questions not answered and a lot of areas of the story that were not explored. As a result, I hope the third book redeems the series. Overall, I was very disappointed in where Synder took this story as it had a lot of tropes that I strongly disliked as well as there were too many plot holes in this book. Therefore, I gave this story a 2 out of 5 stars. With all that being said it was entertaining and was a quick read. It just annoyed me a lot at certain parts. So with all this said I will finish the trilogy as my hope is that this book was setting the scene for the final book.

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