Review--Midnight Beauties by Megan Shepherd

 

The witches, beasties, goblins, and Royals return in this spellbinding conclusion to New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd’s Grim Lovelies duology. 

Ever since she discovered her affinity for magic, seventeen-year-old Anouk has been desperate to become a witch. It’s the only way to save her friends who, like Anouk, are beasties: animals enchanted into humans. But unlike Anouk, the other beasties didn’t make it out of the battle at Montélimar in one piece.

With her friends now trapped in their animal forms, Anouk is forced into a sinister deal involving a political marriage with her sworn enemy, a wicked plot to overthrow London’s fiercest coven of witches, and a deadly trial of fire to become a witch. The price for power has always been steep in the world of the Haute. Now, it will cost Anouk everything.

Wicked and delightful, this spellbinding sequel and conclusion to Grim Lovelies is perfect for fans of The Cruel Prince and The Hazelwood Wood.

I finally picked up the second half of the Grim Lovelies duology by Megan Shepherd, Midnight Beauties! I had read Grim Lovelies way back in 2018 as an ARC, so I was really struggling to remember things but like anything I just dove in and hoped for the best! 

I remembered this world vaguely, but I also remember how much I did kind of struggle with the world-building. It was just a little bit strange I guess in some of the terminology. I mean, yes, Beasties are obvious, Pretties, threw me a bit on this return trip, then there's Royals, and Goblins, and of course, we all know witches! But there were just other aspects to this world that I remember finding hard to grasp, I guess mainly the setup between all these groups was hard to remember.

Anouk was our heroine, she was once a Beastie but was turned human and was raised by a witch, along with some of her friends. But sadly, her friends were turned back into Beasties and Anouk is determined to return them back to their human form, which is a form they all took a liking to. 

Prince Rennar, a Royal who I cannot really remember well from the beginning has a hold on her friends but is willing to give them back to her and even turn them human...if she agrees to marry him. Yes, it's a bit like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast that way. But he even says their marriage can be purely political...unless she wants more. But Anouk's heart belongs to Beau of course. But Rennar also needs her help to defeat a new enemy in town who will threaten life for pretty much everyone as it's your typical evil-doer who needs vanquishing.

Anouk agrees to Rennar's terms, but first wants to venture to a "teacher" of sorts so she can learn more about her magic and become a true witch. She's basically going to witch school and Rennar agrees. But naturally, not everything goes as Anouk had hoped it would.

I definitely do not recommend reading a duology with years and year apart between reading the first book, as an ARC no less, and then diving into the second book without having time to reread the first book. It's a struggle for sure to get back into the swing of things one last time. I fear the other series I must do this for that are waiting for me, but what can you do?

While I did struggle a good bit with memory issues and trying to grasp this world's "rules," so to speak. I did enjoy the characters. Anouk and her friends were an interesting bunch since they were once animals. I can't remember how long they lived life as animals before they were turned human. But it does make for intriguing character development to see them adapt back to their human lives after being temporarily turned back into animals. It does kind of make your head spin when I think about it!

I'll also admit that I got a little lost with some of these other characters, mainly this new powerful enemy to be defeated. Plus there were a handful of other side characters that kept popping up. Honestly, I felt like it was a little bit of a character overload as the main circle of Beastie friends is like five or six people! So adding in more characters kind of makes the pages over-crowded. But I can partially chalk this up to my time away from the series.

The ending to this one was a bit surprising. I did kind of suspect something of this nature happening, but the eventual resolution was a bit of a surprise! I was happy with where we left things as it brought about a nice resolution with the knowledge that these characters will live on beyond the pages ending. That's really the best way to end any kind of series!

I think I really struggled with this one because of that time lapse between books. I do not recommend doing this but when there's a time crunch on other books I just couldn't bring myself to do a re-read. Normally, I can get by without one but yeah, I do struggle. So my lack of memory of some things here did effect my level of enjoyment. But it was still a cute story and enjoyable for the most part.

Overall Rating 2.5/5 stars (note: Goodreads peeps, my rating here on my blog means that I found the book to be okay, in this case, slightly better than okay!)