Goldilox and the Three Weres: Review: Diamond Fire by Ilona Andrews

Diamond Fire
(Hidden Legacy #3.5)
Ilona Andrews
Release: November 3, 2018
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Nevada Frida Baylor and Connor Ander Rogan cordially invite you to join their wedding celebration. Summoning, weather manipulation, and other magical activities strictly forbidden.

Catalina Baylor is looking forward to wearing her maid of honor dress and watching her older sister walk down the aisle. Then the wedding planner gets escorted off the premises, the bride’s priceless tiara disappears, and Rogan's extensive family overruns his mother’s home. Someone is cheating, someone is lying, and someone is plotting murder.

To make this wedding happen, Catalina will have to do the thing she fears most: use her magic. But she’s a Baylor and there’s nothing she wouldn't do for her sister's happiness. Nevada will have her fairy tale wedding, even if Catalina has to tear the mansion apart brick by brick to get it done.

Review:

Words cannot express how happy I am to have more Hidden Legacy. I love this world so much! Diamond Fire is set just after the end of Wildfire and transitions away from Nevada's POV, which we see in the prologue, to her younger sister's.

The world looks slightly different when seen through Catalina's eyes. Like Nevada, she's been taught to hide her powers but Catalina's even more guarded. She's wary of attention and fears forming attachments to anyone outside her family. It will be interesting to see her having an adult relationship, though that's not happening here. Catalina's only eighteen at this point and there's going to be a time jump to her first full length novel.

What we do get is the story of how Catalina learns to accept her magic over the course of her first big case. I'm looking forward to seeing how far she's come by the time we get her next book. I also love the rest of the younger Baylors and can't wait to see more from all of them. It looks like Rogan's mother may stick around as well. She's such an interesting combination of formidable and unassuming. Nevada doesn't appear much in the story but I didn't really miss her. Rogan shows up a few times, but I think the shift in focus to the younger characters was quite successful. So what I'm saying is I love them all and I need the next book like now!

My only complaint about Diamond Fire is that it ends abruptly and wraps up the mystery a little too easily. That's kind of to be expected with the novella length though. There are also some descriptions of characters' powers where I would have liked more explanation, but I'm thinking that will come in later books.

If you haven't read the Hidden Legacy series, I think you could start here and continue with Catalina's story. There are some spoilers for the first three books, though. But I don't know why you'd want to do that. This series is so good!