Betraying Season

by Marissa Doyle

I'm really struggling with what to rate this book. I gave it's predecessor 4 stars, and I feel like I liked this one about equally, but I don't know if it quite falls under the "I really liked it" category. I'm torn, but sticking with 3. If I did halves, perhaps I'd go for 3 and a half.

Betraying Season is the sequel to Bewitching Season, which I read last year about this time (maybe I'm just not remembering it well!) The first book focused on twins Penelope and Persephone Leland, although the story mostly revolved around Persy. This time around, Pen gets to be the focus of the novel. Persy is newly married in England, so Pen decides to live in Ireland for a while with her former governess and her new husband. While she's there she's studying magic and hoping to become as skilled as her sister. However, things get a little more complicated when the handsome and dashing Niall Keating comes into her life. What she doesn't know is that Niall's mother is a powerful witch too, and she wishes to use Pen in her plot to kill the Queen.

I did feel that the regency elements and the magical elements blended together better in this story than in the previous book. One thing that annoyed me though was that they used the word "horripilatious" way too much.

This book is written in third person with an omniscient narrator. Sometimes the narrative is about Pen and sometimes about Niall. And since you're told what they are thinking and feeling there's really no suspense as to whether Niall is legit or not. I kind of think I would have liked it all to be from Pen's perspective so you were wondering what Lady Keating was up to and if Niall was telling the truth or not. Would have added some suspense that the book was lacking.