Review – Grace and Glory (Harbinger, Book 3) by Jennifer L. Armentrout (2/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 380 pages
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Release Date: June 1, 2021
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08F3RLPQN
Stand Alone or Series: 3rd book in the Harbinger series
Source: Bought eBook for Kindle
Rating: 2/5 stars

“Trinity Marrow has lost the battle and her beloved Protector. Even with both demons and Wardens on her side, Trin may not win the war against the Harbinger.

Bringing Lucifer back to the world to fight the Harbinger is probably a really, really bad idea, but they’re out of options—and the world’s ultimate fallen angel is the only being powerful enough to impact the outcome.

As Trin and Zayne form a new and more dangerous bond and Lucifer unleashes Hell on earth, the apocalypse looms and the world teeters on the end of forever. Win or lose, one thing is certain—nothing will ever be the same.”

Series Info/Source: This is the second book in the Harbinger series. I bought this book for my Kindle.

Thoughts: This was disappointing and is the 2nd Armentrout book I’ve been really disappointed in this year (the last one I read and disliked was “The Crown of Gilded Bones”). I honestly don’t know if I have changed or if her writing style has changed but I found this conclusion to The Harbinger series pretty lackluster.

I loved the first book in this series and enjoyed the second book, but this one was just a lot of…well….nothing. There are lots of scenes where Trinity gushes over how perfect Zayne is; it was just eye-rollingly nauseating. I actually started skimming the scenes between these two because they were soooo boring and repetitive. It was like a couple of teens going “I love you more”, no “I love you more, no “I LOVE you more” over and over.

Then the big battle scene (the HUGE battle scene we’ve been waiting for the whole series) was just suddenly over. It was soooo disappointing. I was curious how all the outstanding issues were going to be resolved when I was already 80% of the way through the book and now I know; it was ridiculous how this ended.

SPOILER START
The battle was basically over because God decided it should be over…which was just such a cop out. Armentrout spends a ton of time setting up how everything could go wrong and how complicated the battle with Gabriel was going to be and God shows up and bam, done!
SPOILER END

Then there is the pregnancy scare (I am going to be vague here, but it happens pretty early on in the book). A ton of page space is given to this issue, which ends up being an absolute non-issue. It was a waste of my time to read these portions and I disliked them. So much angsting over so much nothing!!!

Additionally, there is a whole bunch of set up for what I am guessing is going to be a spin-off series. This whole Anti-Christ storyline is started but not resolved. The rest of the story is tied up in a nice “happily ever after” bow, very quickly and in a way that feels completely forced and contrived.

Last complaint is the editing, I feel like it didn’t exist. I noticed multiple typos and places where spaces were missing or punctuation was wrong. Not to mention this book probably should have been a couple hundred pages shorter because of all the unnecessary junk described above.

So, you ask what I liked about this book? I like the whole thing about Peanut and where he comes from. I like that we get to see some of the characters from the first book. I also think that the fight scenes were generally well done (aside from the last one being soooo disappointing). I did finish this because I was incredibly curious to see how things would wrap up, but the wrap-up was very disappointing.

My Summary (2/5): Overall I didn’t like this. If you started the series you’ll probably want to finish it. If you haven’t started the series I would skip it. I think I am officially no longer an Armentrout fan and will be moving on to other authors. I am also very sad I actually spent money on this book, I should have waited for a copy from the library. The actual technical quality of this book was very poor and I have read numerous ARCs that were better edited than this final version.