Any Way the Wind Blows - finally finishing this series

Author: Rainbow Rowell

Genres: Fantasy, romance, paranormal

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

To give some context, I rated the first book 5 stars and the second book 3 stars.

Finally done with this series!! This was so much better than the second book but I'm sad because it made the second book seem so redundant now.... This was definitely a book for people who love Simon and Baz.

What each book in the series has done so far is to introduce a problem/ villain and Simon, Baz and Penelope go save the day. So, while the problem gets fixed in both the first and third book, the second one did not get resolved, so there are a lot of loose ends left untied.

There were also many instances of plot convenience... And this was definitely right on the line between young adult and new adult.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I also did not appreciate how all the characters end up with somebody at the end. Why can't we show solid friendships (apart from Simon and Penelope and Baz and Penelope?) I'm talking about Agatha and Niamh.

We were approaching the end of the book and Simon still hasn't found out that he's Lucy's son and related to the Saliburys and the reveal was just that there happened to be an Excalibur sword in the middle of all the food and Simon just happened to pick it up??? UNDERWHELMING. (Although I couldn't think of an alternative way for Simon to find out but yeah underwhelming.)

I'm still glad to have this conclusion to the story and that we have more Simon and Baz content, but it is not perfect.

I'm also salty that they just decided to leave the way things were run in America as it was with the NowNext and Vegas vampires... They didn't even know whether they were going to let anyone else know what was happening in America. Agatha just got out of that traumatizing incident and didn't get any closure from that and just moved on to the events of the third book like??? Apart from the vague mentions of the second book and Shepard being in the third book after they met him in the second book, the entire second book could have been removed from the series and not much of an impact would have been made. (Would have been a bit confusing but I still believe the third book made the second book seem so much more redundant).