I liked the first one - and really wanted to love this one - but it was just okay. It's long and slow, and while some parts were interesting, on the whole it felt like nothing happened in the book until the very end. I loved the two main human characters (and the aliens) but I didn't enjoy the romance aspect at all. Really the only good things were meeting more aliens and learning more about the aliens. Otherwise it's a lot of dark angsty stuff, which I frankly just didn't enjoy reading about. There were just way too many interesting things that were sidelined in favor of Cora dealing with her (admittedly understandable) trauma.