Trash, With Some Plot

 Zodiac Academy: Shadow Princess by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti 

 This book was huge but unlike the previous book it spanned a few months instead of a week and things actually happened to move the plot along. A little. Darcy and Lance are together. Lance thinks they are Elysian Mates but nothing ever comes of that. Except Seth catches them and starts blackmailing them. And because they were keeping it a secret from Tory to protect Lance, she didn't know and now she can't know. And Seth is the WORST. And this causes a rift between Tory and Darcy for almost two months until Lance mistakes Tory for Darcy and then they FINALLY tell her everything. Darius and Tory hook up but are still antagonistic to each other and that's super awkward because the four of them have to have super secret shadow practice because the twins have the shadows after the ceremony in the previous book. Geraldine hooked up with Max on the Eclipse but she could care less and aside from the Lance/Darius scenes is my favorite thing about this book. The Twins are pretending to be Fire Harpys and have flying lessons with the new Tarot professor: Gabriel Nox. For Christmas the Twins go to their palace and start learning about their family and their history. They also have a really fun snowball fight with the Heirs, and everyone gets along wonderfully. Maybe the guys should stop being horrible and start working with the girls! Then, there is a Nymph attack and the girls have to stop hiding their Order forms and completely transform into Phoenixes to save everyone and it's great. Lionel was late to the fight; I definitely think he orchestrated the attack and he orchestrated the attack that killed the King and Queen. Darcy and Lance bring Clara back from the Shadow Realm. Darius and Tory were supposed to help them but the stars wanted them to have a magical moment and find out that they are Elysian Mates and Tory rejected the bond because Darius has been horrible to her and the only reason he was apologizing was because he found out about the bond, not because he was sorry. So now they both have black rings around their eyes and are Star Crossed. Meanwhile, Clara attacked Lance and left him for dead; Darcy sends up a beacon and screams for help and that's where the book ends. I'm so irritated with this book. I enjoyed it. I'm going to keep reading it. But, I'm irritated. The characters are so dumb. They need to stop being dumb.