How is it October already and somehow it still feels like summer outside? The sun is shining, it’s way too warm, and I’m desperately waiting for that proper cold, gloomy autumn weather to finally show up. So I guess I’ll have to find my autumn somewhere else — and apparently, that somewhere is the Scottish Highlands.
Daybreak is the second and final book in the Nightshade duology, and we’re going straight back to Sorrowsong after everything that happened in the first book. Alex and Ophelia are separated, heartbroken, and very much not on good terms. He’s back in New York dealing with his family and the disappearance of his father, while she’s still in Scotland… alone and being watched.
And then someone starts threatening them with evidence of the murder they committed on campus.
Which means these two are going to have to find their way back to each other whether they’re ready for it or not.
Honestly, I was craving Scottish autumn, dark academia, old university buildings — although old universities currently make me want to throw up a little because apparently things like Cornell 7 exist — gloomy skies, secrets, obsession and maybe a little murder while I wait for October to actually start feeling like October outside.
Unfortunately… the atmosphere was probably one of the things I enjoyed most.
I definitely like Alex more than Ophelia. She spends a lot of this book suffering, while Alex is very much in his I would burn the world down for you / die for you / say every single thing you want a fictional man to say era. And listen, it worked. He says all the right things. He made me fall for him too, and he was easily my favorite part of this book.
But the actual story?
I genuinely don’t know if we needed a second book.
Yes, Ophelia has a new stalker, but that storyline felt more like a convenient way of keeping Alex and Ophelia apart for longer than something genuinely threatening. It was also pretty predictable, and the stalker came across as more jealous than terrifying. Considering it was obvious that Alex and Ophelia still desperately wanted each other, it sometimes felt like the book was just searching for reasons not to let them reconcile yet.
The bigger mystery surrounding Alex’s missing father — and the fact that someone clearly wants to hurt them — was much more interesting to me, but even that never developed into something exciting enough to carry the entire book.
The drawing-class scene, though?
Peak.
Loved it. No notes.
And because this is only a duology, I obviously wanted to finish it and see Alex and Ophelia get their ending. But wow, this book was boring. And somehow being bored by a short book is even worse. Don’t you hate when that happens? When you can literally see that there aren’t that many pages left and yet every chapter feels twice as long as it actually is?
I also really disliked how heavily the book leaned into the depression storyline. It added to the already repetitive feeling of the story rather than giving it more emotional depth for me. So much of Daybreak felt like the same emotions, the same problems and the same conversations going around in circles.
And then, after all of that build-up, the actual action lasted what felt like five minutes.
That was probably my biggest problem with the book: it spends so much time stretching everything out, only for the climax to be over ridiculously quickly. Then we get a cute, happy ending, everything gets wrapped up nicely, and… that’s it.
Which would have been fine if I had actually enjoyed getting there.
I didn’t.
What makes this even more disappointing is that Nightshade was a 5-star read for me. I loved the first book. I loved Sorrowsong, the dark academia atmosphere, the tension between Alex and Ophelia, the mystery — all of it. So going from that to struggling through the sequel is kind of insane.
Alex, you were cute. You said all the right things. You tried your best.
But you could not save this book for me.
I wanted Scottish autumn, obsession, murder and dark academia.
Instead, I mostly got repetition, depression, a predictable stalker and approximately five minutes of actual action.
And yes, the happy ending was cute.
But getting there? Such. A. Bore.
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