Stone Cold Touch
(Dark Elements #2)
By Jennifer Armentrout
Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld
Length: 15 hours and 1 minute
Every touch has its price.Layla Shaw is trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered life—no easy task for a seventeen-year-old who’s pretty sure things can’t get worse. Her impossibly gorgeous best friend, Zayne, is forever off-limits thanks to the mysterious powers of her soul-stealing kiss. The Warden clan that has always protected her is suddenly keeping dangerous secrets. And she can barely think about Roth, the wickedly hot demon prince who understood her in ways no one else could.But sometimes rock bottom is only the beginning. Because suddenly Layla’s powers begin to evolve, and she’s offered a tantalizing taste of what has always been forbidden. Then, when she least expects it, Roth returns, bringing news that could change her world forever. She’s finally getting what she always wanted, but with hell literally breaking loose and the body count adding up, the price may be higher than Layla is willing to pay…
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(Linked to my review)
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This novel was TOO long-winded and was not worth 15 hours of my time. The basic concept is interesting but the way this was written doesn't do the story justice. The only way I finished this novel was by speeding up the audio book because things weren't moving and I was too far into the novel to justify not finishing it.
Layla makes SO many bad decisions and it always goes bad but she has yet to learn any lessons from the things she goes through. She's too naive and predictable. It's only gotten worse in this novel. All the rash and dumb decisions she makes has reached its quota for me. She's become more and more unlikable with every chapter.
This may or may not be an unpopular opinion with this trilogy, but how in the world is this love triangle even worth it at this point? Both "teams" are so bad in different ways and for different reasons. All the lying, making things up and secrets piling up only serve to make everything more dramatic and long-winded. Zayn seems to have a death wish in the form of trusting someone that can't even control her abilities (and those abilities can actually get him killed). Roth with all his lies and his noble justifications can't make everything that happened as a consequence to that all go away just by saying sorry.
The demons the author includes in this series (which was emphasized with the dance club scene with Roth) makes it seem like the demon world is a whole other complex universe, but it doesn't come across in the story. The wardens, especially, have an archaic system and think of themselves as "saviors" of some kind. Truthfully, they just keep getting worse and worse as a group. The other demons aren't even explored. They're just declared monsters to be killed or creatures to be run off. The story would have been more interesting had there been more of a focus on them instead of all the drama and "danger" surrounding Layla.
What the heck was that ending? I saw that coming from miles away (just like the twists in the first book). I'm starting to think that maybe it's what the author was going for. There weren't enough "twists" to this story to make this novel keep my attention.
My Consensus: This story only happened because everyone lied to someone about some important thing at one point in time. I wish it went deeper than that because the world the author created could have made for a really good story.
A Note: I'd like to mention how glad I was to see that the girl on girl hate has lessened (compared to the first novel), but the slut-shaming is at an all-time high (especially in the beginning).
The Audio Book:
This narrator isn't for me. There was barely any distinction between male and female voices this time around. There was also a few parts where I couldn't tell what was story narration and what was a character speaking.
My Rating:
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