The Wren in the Holly Library

Monsters have come out of hiding, and the world is ever altered. When a desperate thief takes a job to steal a diamond from the library of one of NYC's wealthiest, she gets more than she bargains for. Turns out, the owner of said diamond is actually an ancient and powerful "monster." Instead of taking his vengeance on her, he makes a counter-offer that's too good to refuse.

This was an interesting collaboration of a dystopian world with magic, monsters and elements of celtic folklore. Our heroine has had a rough life as an orphan, struggling to survive, along with her two best friends. The writing had a few issues from plot holes, unbelievable situations of seemingly miraculous recovery post-injury, and weakly written side characters. Likeable, sure - but felt more of an afterthought to the main story. Graves promises training as a bargaining chip to ensure her safety, but he deals in riddles, deception and an air of distrust - making it hard to truly LIKE him...nevertheless,

While the beginning of the story was extremely entertaining, I began to get frustrated in the second half of the book. While there was diversity in monsters, we didn't really get much more than species-name-dropping with the exception of Vampires, Werewolves and a couple magic user types. I really would've loved more intensity in the danger, instead it fell flat. I was dismayed that any complications that our characters faced were too easily resolved, and the use of "Interludes" throughout the book felt a bit jarring from the story at hand, rather than to simply have multiple POV's written into the main story to fill in all the gaps I was eager for. Furthermore, the true significance of "the wren" in symbol and name isn't clearly explained, other than that there's an ancient history that references the title.

I DID appreciate that this wasn't a Romantasy of just