I honestly love Bridget Collins, her (adult) books are truly amazing. The characters are great, the mystery is palpable but not impenetrable, the romance is on point. Didn't see the plot twist coming and yet it feels like I unconsciously knew and that's a great mastery from the writer. I've got to say The Binding remains my favorite but The Betrayals was really good as well. I really loved that I could really get into the story (I don't remember reading a book that size so fast for my pleasure) and see and understand it although it's centered around a completely abstract concept. What I loved the most, however, was everytime I closed the book the atmosphere of Montverre was still present, hanging in the air around me.
It's the type of writing I love, the type of story I love, I cannot wait to read more of Bridget Collins' masterpieces!

I have hardly ever felt this conflicted about a book. I loved it, sometimes; I hated it, sometimes — and so I’ve averaged it out to three, because I truly don’t know what to think.

I remember loving The Binding. Sure, it was very slow-paced at times, and I found it hard to keep going; but the characters had me invested, I cared about the story and where it would go, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Betrayals has been a mixed bag. I certainly wasn’t expecting the twist; I wasn’t expecting it, and I didn’t love it.

The fact that Claire and Aimé were separate characters for so much of the book meant that I learned to dislike Claire for her shortcomings (though not as much as I disliked adult Léo, to be fair) and to love Aimé, or at least who I thought Aimé was, from Léo’s descriptions. I also couldn’t help but feel a little cheated, since the homosexual romance turned out to be no such thing at all. I keep thinking of that meme, name something that’s gay and homophobic at the same time…

Beyond that, the fact that Christians are the oppressed collective in an intensely vague worldbuilding that shared objectionable resemblances to deeply traumatizing historical events that affected other religious communities was also very iffy to me; perhaps if we ever learned what the Party was actually doing, or what Purity Laws truly stand for — but like I said, the worldbuilding is intensely vague. Perhaps focusing on Montverre and its inner, closed-off world — since that’s clearly what Collins wanted to write about, anyway — would’ve been more successful.

The whole time I felt like the book was building up to something, only to never really take me anywhere. I guess it betrayed me, too.