Dead of Winter (Including a recap from Poison Princess and Endless Knight)

Author: Kresley Cole
Series: Arcana Chronicles #3
Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy, Dystopian, Romance
Release Date: January 6, 2015

Summary: Heartbreaking decisions: Evie was almost seduced by the life of comfort that Death offered her, until Jack was threatened by two of the most horrific Arcana, The Lovers. She will do anything to save him, even escape Death's uncanny prison, full of beautiful objects, material comforts and stolen glances from a former love. Uncertain victory: Despite leaving a part of her heart behind with Death, Evie sets out into a frozen and perilous post-apocalyptic wasteland to meet up with her allies and launch an attack on The Lovers and the vast army they command. Such formidable enemies require a battle plan, and the only way to kill them once and for all may mean Evie, Jack, and Death allying. Evie doesn't know what will prove more impossible: surviving slavers, plague, Bagmen and other Arcana or convincing Jack and Death to work together. Two heroes returned: There's a thin line between love and hate, and Evie just doesn't know where she stands with either Jack or Death. Will this unlikely trio be able to defeat The Lovers without killing one another first?

Review: First off, let me state that I personally do not feel that this should be classified as a 'Young-Adult' book. Reasons behind that are a) language and b) some pretty sexually explicit content. 

Now that that is out of the way!! Let's recap and review!! In Poison Princess,  a flash happens around the world and anyone outside was immediately turned to ash/dust. Evie and her mother are some of the few human survivors. Miraculously, Evie happens upon Jackson Deveaux, a fellow high school student that has had his eye on Evie for quite some time. Despite their hatred towards one another they decide to combine forces and search for Evie's grandmother so that Evie can learn to be an true 'Arcana'. The first book is then about Evie and Jack; their fight for survival and growing attraction towards each other. Moving on to book two, Endless Knight.  Continuing their search for Evie's grandmother proves quite difficult after what concluded in Poison Princess. Not only is Jack now extremely distant to Evie, but she is hearing Death, a fellow Arcana, in her head, trying to persuade her to ally herself with him. Through unfortunate circumstances, Evie finds herself in Death's hands, but after some time starts growing attracted towards him. *Note that Endless Knight also has a very explicit sexual scene* .  At the end of Endless Knight Evie finds out that The Lovers (Arcana twins noted for their extreme acts of torture) have captured Jack. Whether Death likes it or not, Evie knows that she must find a way to get away from him and save Jack. With a cliffhanger ending that made me want to scream I had to test my patience and wait a little under a year for Dead of Winter to finally debut itself! 

Looking like this the whole time:

  . . . and this: 

 with a little some of this in the last few days before it released:

After what felt like forever, I finally managed to get my grubby mits on a copy of Dead of Winter and completely devoured it. Cole has created an amazingly creepy, fantastic, and utterly fascinating world of Arcana. Dead of Winter starts up only a few moments after Endless Knight ends and the plot continued smoothly throughout the novel. The pace was decent for a good majority of the novel, with a few minor exceptions. My one problem, as stated above, was mainly how explicit the sexual content was since this book is classified as 'Young-Adult' or directed towards teens. This was the main reason behind my 3 star review. Besides that, Cole definitely hit a home run with Dead of Winter. BUT ALAS!!! With those endings!!! I'm going crazy!!!