At this point, I am sick and tired of the story endlessly circling around her dark past.
I appreciate that she was actually really bad. Like horrifically bad. And now she is good. But the character the reader met in the first book and up to this book experiences no character development whatsoever. And she is ridiculously good. The book can't stop constantly reminding us how bad she was in the past maybe because it's so incredibly unbelievable considering her current personality.
You couldn't find a more naive goodie-two-shoes if you tried which stands in stark contrast to her past. It's almost like she left her understanding of the world behind together with her dark magic.

Another point that frustrated me a lot is that she doesn't do anything proactive.
I already mentioned this in my review of the second book and it's even worse in this one.
She hovers in this precarious situation where her presence alone endangers all the people she holds dear but at the same time, she just lives her daily life, running her shop, and just waits for the next catastrophe to hit. Why doesn't she at least try to lay a false trail about her whereabouts?
Why doesn't she develop active defenses to protect the people that are important to her?
Why doesn't she try to plan ways of getting rid of the constant looming danger of the black hat bureau or at least kill or imprison her father?
Why doesn't she work at eliminating information about her that others might have access to like bureau records?
And she figured out that she is being shadowed by some demon lackey and basically just doesn't do anything about it?
Why doesn't she establish other secret places and stashes to keep her dark magic artifacts?

There is so much she could do to improve her situation but instead she just plays house and at the same time is stuck in a constant and tiresome identity crisis over her dark past.
I am sympathetic to her situation. But 3 books in a row are enough time to move on.

I am so sick of hearing her lament about how horrible she was. Yes, we get it! We got it within the first book! You can stop already!

This series is frozen in time without any actual character development at all. All the character development happened before the first book and we are just constantly reminded of this previous change. That is not how character development works.

I fell in love with the premise of this series but the books just keep baiting me without delivering anything except for a bit of shallow action which is sadly almost always driven by the protagonist's stupidity, and sappy playing house. I am not aversed to a bit of sappy romance and family but there is nothing else here.

I am not sure I will give the 4th book a try. I feel like 3 books have been enough time for the author to get somewhere and if she didn't by now she won't in future books either.
Really sad to see another series with such a promising premise die on execution. ( )