Escaping into My Books

Life is a mess right now, so I am keeping my review short and sweet.

This is the 3rd and final book of this series, of which I loved, loved, the first two books. The world created is great! The characters are unique and the central story that is carried through each book is great, including the early stages of the the central romance. All good. BUT.... 

I thought that the final book felt...unfinished...despite it being the biggest book of the 3. In fact that was my main issue with it...it felt like it had too many words and not enough substance. There was a lot of time spent on flowery description and exposition...and not enough time spent tying up all the loose ends. I sometimes felt like the characters were just talking, talking, talking...before they finally got around to doing something.  So the book needed a lot of fat trimming basically. Get to the point. Cut out all that unnecessary stuff. Tighten it up.  How the characters feels what they think can be demonstrated to the reader with a lot less words. And another issue I had, was that a lot of time was spent this book building up the final big bad...but it all was kind of dropped and left open ended. So it gave me a feeling like...wait...that's it? What just happened?  It's like the story was changed last minute or there was plans to maybe add more, but decided not to last minute..I don't know...but it felt unfinished. And don't even get me started on the final resolution to the romance...that built and built and built...and never really got that satisfying resolution. I understand the author was trying to be realistic for the situation, but at some point it began to feel like tragedy just for tragedy's sake.

But obviously, as a whole and together, I loved the entire series,and this book by itself..still was enjoyable enough that I finished and did enjoy many aspects...but those issues above kinda prevented me from LOVING it.