Carissa Broadbent‘s first Crowns of Nyaxia novel starts out quite good and remains so for most of the first third despite a couple questionably forced events. During the second trial however the protagonist suddenly transmorphs into a suicidal bleeding heart for no discernable reason (immediately after coldly dispatching an acquaintance no less), which was offputting enough for me to drop it right there.
Originally having avoided April Conrad‘s Reborn in Blood series due to the somewhat alarming subtitle (Reincarnated As My Hot Vampire Alt), I eventually decided to give it a chance in a fit of boredom. The first book at least ends up decent enough; while there’s a persistent sense of wrongness about how events play out, with things like the central romance feeling forced and early events not quite coming across as natural, it reminded me enough of series like Leadale and Eve of Destruction to push on into the second hoping it would improve.
It does not improve. The second book in the series in fact gets far worse in a number of ways extremely quickly.