Adversity by Claire Farrell

Title: Adversity
Series: Cursed
Author: Claire Farrell
Previous Books in Series: Verity, Clarity
Rating: 4.5 stars
Length: 3607 Kindle units

Refresher: Perdita is the victim of an ancient Gypsy curse that gives her happiness with her werewolf soulmate Nathan but ultimately means she must die young.
 

Adversity is an example of the increasingly frequent phenomenon that is the between-the-novels novella. These can be many lengths – short stories or, as in this case, almost full novels in their own right – and many styles – prequels, different character viewpoints, incidental activity between novels. Regardless, they seem to be almost a necessity of modern series that seek to to whet the appetite of readers chomping at the bit for fresh installments of their favorite characters. I have to confess that as a reader, I am not a huge fan of the trend. When I’m in the middle of a story, I don’t want to go back and read about things that I already know happened, and I don’t want filler fluff; I want to see how the story progresses. But then I feel like I have to read these prequels or I will have missed something, but then I am disappointed because I don’t get any story advancement.
 

That is my opinion on these stories in general, and I apologize to Claire Farrell that this is the second review I've given her where I dedicate many words to my thoughts on the genre as a whole. In the case of Adversity, I have to rule the story absolutely crucial for plot purposes. In my review of Clarity, I commented that we didn’t hear that much from some of the characters in the first book. One of the scarcer characters was Amelia, with whom Perdita and Nathan periodically checked in, but who seemed to be doing some plot-relevant things on the sidelines. This is confirmed when at the end of the novel she drastically changes the course of events with relatively little sense or explanation. So when I found out that book 2.5 was Clarity again from Amelia’s point of view, I decided I definitely had to pick that up.
 

Now that I have read it, I know that we didn’t miss out on too much by not getting Amelia’s viewpoint. In fact, I was kind of grateful we missed out on Amelia’s whining. In Clarity, both Nathan and Perdita are constantly thinking about how they can make things easier or better for the people around them, but Amelia is apparently thinking, “Why isn’t anyone paying attention to me?” So I wanted to smack her a little bit. But it was cool to see what was going on in the mysterious dreams she was having, and it was definitely helpful to see what was going through her head at the end. So all in all, I call it a win, though I think I’ll be glad to go back to Perdita’s head in Purity.
 

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