A Marvellous Light was one of my favourite reads last year so I was incredibly excited for this sequel. And it was fun! I liked the first part better but this one was still a very engaging murder mystery with sn enchanting dash of magic.
What I really liked was that there was a broad recap of the first book woven into the story at the beginning of the book. That was very useful.
I always like a good murder mystery and this one did not only have a great setting but provided awhole host of interesting subjects and a satisfying conclusion.
The charackters are also very colourful and interesting, a mix of people we knew already and new faces.
Unfortunately I was not blown away by the romancce between Maud and Violet so this one did not reach teh levels of the first one for me. I am also just personally not a big fan of sex scenes in books. They were my least favourite thing in the first book and it felt like this one was even more explicit. But that is just a personal preference and not a real criticism of the book. I also felt like the magical aspect of the world came a bit to short here, I hope we'll see more of it again in the next one.

Still, a very solid read and I can't wait for the next one!

PS: I absolutely adored the epilogue, I just love Robin and Edwin.

I thought the first book in the Last Binding series was fantastic so I was very happy to receive an eArc of the sequel for review from NetGalley.

As with A Marvellous Light, the author makes us instantly warm to her protagonists. Maud Blyth is just the kind of inspiring heroine I love to read about, subverting what is expected of her by society.

The mysteries within the book kept me guessing the whole way through and the story had many very humorous moments that balanced the darker ones perfectly.

There are LGBTQ+ themes throughout the series and I found the relationships to be believable and heartwarming. Some of the sex scenes are quite graphic but very well written.

I really enjoyed this sequel very nearly as much as the first book and thought the narrator was as very good and made it a very pleasant listening experience.

since i was fond of this book's predecessor i had really high hopes for <i>a restless truth</i>. in fact, given that it centres on a sapphic romance, i actually thought i would like this even more (your honor, i am biased). and...ugh. the premise has so much potential (i have a weakness for books set in enclosed spaces like ships/cruises/trains...) but as soon as were introduced to the two main characters i felt kind of underwhelmed. maybe it would been refreshing to have a love interest who wasn't (yet again) a white beautiful aristocrat...but oh well. violet's antics were frustrating. she goest to great lengths to be sort of scandalous and while i'm sure that will make her intriguing figure for many, i just found her puerile. maud like her brother suffers a bit from main character syndrome, in that they have these rather generic personalities. the dynamic between maud & violet was too been-there-done-that for me (one is sunny and naive, the other one is more sardonic and charismatic).

and don't get me started on lord hawthorn...i absolutely detest this type of character. while some may find his vulgarity charming or amusing, i thought him annoying and affected. he likes to swear, wow, how edgy...lastly, we have another addition to this ragtag group, one whose name made my brain itch (his full name is alanzo cesare rossi....???? is he spanish? italian? both?). maybe the latter half of the novel will provide an answer for this but a quick search only resulted in a scene were hawthorn calls rossi a 'bloodsucking mediterranean gutter-rat'.
annoying/bland characters aside, the odd pacing never drew me in.

i'm sure ppl will love this, i can see this type of writing, romance, and character dynamics appeal to fans of casey mcquiston. chances are if you loved the 1st book in this series you will also love this one. what can i say, i am just a contrarian outlier.

I enjoyed A Restless Truth, but nowhere near as much as I'd hoped, or expected, to.

All the things that I loved about A Marvellous Light are present in its sequel, except that they feel smaller somehow, less developed or else more subdued. The writing is still great: Marske has a real knack for charming, playful narration, and her storytelling always feels buoyant and lively, leaning into the chaotic-but-fun-hijinks-ness of it all. The way she crafts character and dialogue are especially impressive: her characters think and act and talk like real people, so it's no surprise that when they're all together in a scene, plenty of fun and quippy exchanges ensue.

All of this is to say, a lot of the groundwork underlying Marske's writing in A Restless Truth--the narration, the character work, the dialogue--is solid, just as it was in the novel's predecessor. Where I think this novel let me down, then, is in the bigger-picture stuff, namely the plot and the romance. The plot of A Restless Truth, a whodunnit, has a kind of sputtering quality that made it really hard to be invested in; it felt like the narrative equivalent of trying to start a car and having its engine stall over and over again. I like a story that slowly builds up to a crescendo--like A Marvellous Light's did--whereas whodunnits, by their nature, tend to have a stop-and-start style of storytelling. You investigate clues, but nothing turns up; you chase down leads, but they turn out to be dead-ends; you get closer to figuring out the mystery, but your attempts are thwarted by something or someone. It was too episodic for me, and the fact of the matter is, I just don't like that kind of storytelling all that much.

None of this is helped by the fact that the entire novel takes place over 6 days, and in one singular location, too. These two things only work to make the narrative feel too small, too limited. I usually love stories set in some kind of enclosed space or area--most of A Marvellous Light took place on an estate--but A Restless Truth took it too far. For this reason, its story ends up feeling a bit stagnant, not dynamic enough because everything in it is just stewing in this one small space and in this very short time frame.

This issue with the limited setting and time frame affects the characters too, and, by extension, their romance. I pretty much immediately loved Maud: she's stubborn and a little foolhardy, but she cares so deeply about doing good, and is so earnest and compassionate, trying not to let down the people she cares about, that it's impossible not to be endeared to her. My problem with the character work, then, isn't with Maud, but with Violet, the other main lead of this book, and Maud's love interest. Violet is, like Edwin in A Marvellous Light, emotionally closed off, reticent to reveal any real part of herself to others. And I absolutely love these kinds of characters; the fact that they're closed off means that they have that much more room to grow, so that when they do open up later on in the novel, it feels so much more rewarding to you as a reader. Thing is, we never really get to see Violet open up in A Restless Truth. Like I said, the novel only takes place over 6 days, so there's really only so much character development that can happen without straining plausibility. It would've felt disingenuous if Violet had done a complete 180 over the course of 6 days and become totally open and emotionally trusting, but at the same time the limited time frame of the book puts it in a bind because we barely get to see Violet open up at all. There is a little development, to be sure, but it feels so paltry. Maud goes through such a strong character arc in this book, but Violet is kind of left in the lurch; her character arc is less arc and more...slight curve. By the end of the novel Violet is only beginning to consider opening up, but it's too little too late: the novel is over, and we won't get to read from her POV again.

My problem with Violet's character development, or lack thereof, carries over to her romance with Maud. Because Violet doesn't get to have that strong of an arc throughout the novel, the romance also isn't allowed to grow as much as it could have--or as much as I wanted it to. I mean, I liked the dynamic that Maud and Violet had, but their romance felt incomplete to me. It's not that it was bad, but that it didn't go far enough. And that's really the crux of my issue with the novel as a whole: it develops a lot of things, but it doesn't develop them enough. I was constantly left wanting more: more honesty from these characters, more intimacy, more time.

I hate to keep comparing this book to A Marvellous Light, but I keep doing it because that first installment did so well all the things that A Restless Truth stumbled on. And that's what's disappointing me about A Restless Truth, I think: all the components are there, but the novel as a whole feels like it could've been much better than it ended up being.

Thanks so much to Macmillan UK Audio for providing me with an advanced audiobook copy of this via NetGalley!