Queen's Gambit

I thought that everyone in urban fantasy had agreed that, when you've got a series with some books and some short stories or whatever, readers will be good to go as long as they never skip anything with whole numbers. If there is, like, a prequel labeled "0.5" or a story between books that you call "3.5" or whatever, it'll give you extra viewpoints into some of the characters, but it's not going to be vital to the main plot. So I read book 4, and then I was like "OK, time for book 5." Only, a huge portion of book 5 hinges on a bunch of stuff that happens in a novella in between the two books. It's incredibly irritating and kind of wrecks up the reading experience.

Also, while every book before this one has an ending, this one literally just stops. It's not even exactly a cliffhanger, in my opinion. Just "here's a bombshell that, honestly, feels like it's been telegraphed for a while, and also ... yeah, that's it, no wrapup."

On top of all that, while a number of reviewers say this book needed a content editor -- I mostly don't feel strongly either way on that point -- I will say it definitely needed someone to sit down with the author and say "Karen, friend, this is a 500 year old badass. She isn't going to use the word 'hubby,' except maybe ironically, it certainly should not happen tens of times throughout the book." blehhhhhh

Super irritating, especially in a series that I was really, really enjoying.