Review - Forever Frost (Bitter Frost, Book 2) by Kailin Gow (3/5 stars)

Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
Size: 254 pages
Publisher: The EDGE
Release Date: September 1, 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1597488990
Stand Alone or Series: Book 2 in the Bitter Frost Trilogy
Source: Bought for Kindle
Rating: 3.5/5 stars


This is the second book in Gow's Frost trilogy.  It was a bit better than the first book and picks up right where Bitter Frost left off.  If you are into YA books about faerie that have a love triangle of sorts than this may be the book for you.

This book finds Breena exactly where we left her; facing off with the Summer Queen and trying to answer the Summer Queen in a way that doesn't get Breena imprisoned or worse.  The result is that Breena is allowed to escort Shasta back to the Winter Court in exchange for Breena's mother's return to the Summer Court.  As happens with these things, it is not all that straight-forward.  Shasta has fallen in love with a Summer Court Knight (which is forbidden) and Breena's werewolf friend, Logan, may not have actually died like she thought.  Lurking in and out of the story is Kian, the Winter Prince, who is in love with Breena.  Can they stop the war between the Winter and Summer Courts or at least not make it any worse?

I liked this book better than the second half of the first book, Bitter Frost.  Gow does an excellent job creating beautiful descriptions and her writing is easy to read and engaging.

I still have some trouble with how simplistic the fairy world is; we never get much explanation behind the magic, only the politics are explained in detail.  I also think the characters are a bit 2D; they are fairly predictable and type cast.  I keep waiting to really care about them, but have trouble doing it.  The characters all take themselves very seriously (a little light humor here and there would make them seem more real) and they always work so hard to do what's right that they aren't as believable as they could be.

We do get to see more of the Winter and Summer Queen's personalities, and they are intriguing and strong woman.  In fact I thought they were the most intriguing characters in this book.

The story ends right in the middle of things again, leaving us at a huge cliffhanger.  The cliffhanger is such that I will probably read the last book in the series, Silver Frost, to see what happens.  The books in this series have been incredibly short and simple reads; so it doesn't take a ton of time to read them because of that I am able to accept the mediocrity of the world and characters.

Overall this is an okay book.  It is again very short and overly simple; yet the story is engaging and the Queens especially intriguing.  This book is a good read if you want something that is easy to read and doesn't require a lot of thought.  I still feel like there are a lot of YA series out there that are more well done.  Check out the following before you check out this series: Wicked Lovely (Wicked Lovely (Quality)) series by Melissa Marr, The Iron King (Harlequin Teen) series by Julie Kagawa (absolutely one of the best fairy series I have read ever), Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black, and Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Act I by Lisa Mantchev.   If you don't have any other YA fairy to read, this one is an okay read and for the price of $2.99 on Kindle it is a real bargain.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
 - The Young Adult Reading Challenge
- The 100+ Book Reading Challenge