Approaching the end game…

Another belting entry in the Toby Daye series, The Winter Long sees Toby hit with a new threat – in the form of those she’d thought she’d already left in her past.

First up comes Simon Torquill –identical twin to Toby’s liege, Sylvester, and the man who turned her into a fish for 14 years before the series began –  appearing on her doorstep, trying to apologise, giving veiled warnings of doom and spilling her family secrets (chiefly, that he’s her step-dad, something that Amandine and no-one else had thought to tell her).

And if that wasn’t stressful enough, up pops long-thought-dead Evening Winterrose (she who set the series events in motion way back in Rosemary and Rue by apparently getting murdered), who is most definitely not dead, most definitely not friendly, hell-bent on domination and very hard to kill.

This book felt like I was starting to see the long-game, started and foreshadowed back in Rosemary and Rue, starting to finally reveal itself as Toby learns more about herself, her past and who she is whilst also losing some of the relationships she’s built along the way (though, thankfully, not the relationships that matter the most to me – one of which was escalated in a way that made me squeal).

I’m super-invested in this series at this point, which can now pretty much do no wrong as far as I’m concerned, and am now getting pretty perturbed every time I see how few I have left to read. It’s a good thing McGuire has so many other books to her name that I can pillage once I’m done here.