Widow's Web (Elemental Assassin, #7)

by Jennifer Estep

[Angie]

Widow's Web is good, but to me, the entire plot felt forced and out of place. It's been a few weeks since the events of By a Thread, and the criminals are still reshuffling the power hierarchy. Now, there's a new player in town, Salina Dubois. She's a powerful water elemental, and the daughter of a previous major power player in Ashland. She's just returned after several years away, and no one knows what she's up to. Gin figures she'll wait to see if she's a threat, but when she learns of Salina's history with Owen things change.

The plot of Widow's Web was definitely interesting on its own, but I don't think it fit with what we know about the characters from the previous books. For starters, when has Gin ever thought about anything? A bad guy appears and she immediately starts plotting to take them out. But the one time the bad guy is someone who actually hurt those close to her, and one of them asks her to take them out, she's like "uh, no, not this time." That doesn't make sense at all, until Owen asks Gin not to do it. So Gin's hesitance felt like it was there so she wouldn't have to change her mind for her boyfriend. Keep the peace. Right. The Gin we've come to know would have already had half of plan worked out before anyone could even blink!

In addition to just not fitting Gin's personality, I felt like the entire plot was set up to simply cause a relationship conflict. The whole issue is that Salina is evil, Gin wants to kill her before she kills everyone else, but Owen doesn't want Salina dead since she's his ex. Kind of understandable, except that he sees first hand just how out of her mind she is! He's convinced that he can convince her to seek psychological help, because apparently she's unwell. Well...I never got the sense that she had any mental condition, she was just sadistic and out for revenge. Owen went as far as to use her past as an explanation, except that she has the exact same past as him and Gin and neither of them are psychotic! Of course, all of this puts a strain on their relationship, but I honestly didn't care that much. I like Owen, and they've had some sexy scenes together, but for the most part, Gin and Owen are boring.

In the end, Widow's Web left me kind of underwhelmed and disappointed. The plot was too forced for me to believe it. However, there is a great improvement on the repetition issue. There definitely is still some, but it was mostly a couple of sentences here and there as needed, rather than multiple paragraphs of full recaps.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.