Wow ! Sophia Jordan is such a great author. A Scar In The Bone is the second book in the series, with A Fire In The Sky being the first. This is my first dragon-shifter romantasy. And I have to say, I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far. I didnt think id like "shifter" anything, although i love fantasy and romance. But I love dragons, heard the first book was good, and got approved for an ARC of A Scar In The Bone. Perfect excuse to dive in! I'm now glad i did! The first book pleasantly surprised me. And for book two, it's no different! I did not expect this story to go this route, yet it is all the better for it. It's not often a book surprises me at every turn. If i had to guess how this sequel would go, it went the very opposite of that. We get a lot more lore in this book. We get to see a lot more of Panterra. We delve deeper into Tamsyn and who she is without being the "whipping girl ". And she really comes into herself in this book. I love how it didn't solely focus on the romance. There's so much adventure, figuring out her new surroundings and trying to make a new home for herself. She learns a lot more about her dragon side during this time and comes to terms with who and what she is. There's a new friendship which I loved for Tamsyn !! And the romance is top notch too ! It's left on a note where it hints at so much more to come and I can't wait to see where things go !

Reading this felt like jumping back into a world that had clearly been through a lot while I was gone. There's drama, there’s magic, and there’s a girl riding it all out with grit and stubborn loyalty. It’s fast, intense, and occasionally chaotic, but I was into it.

Tamsyn is one of those characters I just clicked with right away. She doesn’t spend time doubting herself or trying to fit in. She knows who she is and what she’s willing to fight for. She follows her instincts, even when things get complicated, and I loved how steady she stayed when it really counted.

Vetr, though... he had me in a bit of a spin. I spent most of the book trying to figure out if I liked him or not, but that definitely made his character more interesting and fun to read. He’s wild & unpredictable and walking a fine line between brooding and totally unhinged. It worked, kind of, but I kept thinking, couldn’t you have solved half of this by using your magic earlier? That part didn’t totally add up for me.

The time jump at the beginning was rough. I had read the first book a while back, and even after trying to catch up with a quick recap online, I was still confused. There aren’t many reminders built in to help you reorient, which made it harder to settle back into the story. I would’ve appreciated a few more reminders about where things left off, because it took me longer than usual to settle into the story.

And the ending left me wondering if I missed something. Are we getting more books in this world? Because some characters felt like they were introduced with a purpose that never showed up. A few plotlines just sort of... wandered off. If this is the final book, it needed more closure. If it’s a setup for something new, I’d love to know that going in.

Still, I had a good time with it. It moves quickly, it’s dramatic in a good way, and I was never bored. There are definitely pieces that could’ve been stronger, but I enjoyed the ride.

This book was an interesting read! We follow the FMC Tamsyn as she navigates being a dragon and the loss of her mate Fell. After Fells death Tamsyn is allowed to remain with the pride (pack of dragons) which is led by Fells brother Vetr. Tamsyn was raised by humans and didn’t know she was a dragon until later, the pride is helping her learn all their ways. Tamsyn doesn’t want to pick between humans and dragons, she wants to help both live peacefully. I enjoyed watching Tamsyn fight for what she knew was right and growing into (both) her skins!

I will say I’m intrigued with that epilogue though..and kind of scared!

Read if you like:
✨An adventure
✨Fates mates
✨Magic
✨Shifter books (especially dragons)

I really loved the first book so I am sorry to say this was a disappointment. The first book had so much going on and Tamsyn was such a great character with her tragic story but unfortunately this book is borderline boring with no payoff. Tamsyn spends much of the book being looked down upon by the dragon pride as if it’s her fault that she does not understand their ways. There are so many people that mistreat her or even betray her and there is no satisfying vengeance. Likewise others who deserve better do not receive it. There’s just no emotional payoff. It’s weirdly muted on the obvious emotions. I think this is an ending to the series but there’s a lot left unexplained so it all just feels unsatisfying.

I devoured this book, too! It was just as fun and gripping to read as A Fire in the Sky, and I'm so thankful that I got a chance to read an ARC!

My heart broke for Tamsyn as she continued to fight to forge a life for herself in this new world she found herself in. I liked learning more about dragon lore and culture, and feeling Tamsyn's learning curve frustration. The otherness that Tamsyn feels is expressed in a way that is accessible and surprisingly relevant to today's social climate. However, at no point in the story did it become politically heavy.

In this book, I felt the love between Tamysn and Fell, even though Fell is gone. Their chemistry and mate bond isn't what is holding them together. It's that Fell is the only one who truly understands the otherness Tamsyn feels in the world.

I enjoyed the uncertainty of Vetr. I never knew if I should root for him or not, and I still don't. He's that wild card character, and it will be interesting to watch his character progression and where he ends at the end of the story.

***3.25 Star***
Thank you for this ARC!
SPOILERS FOR BOTH 1st and 2nd BOOK BELOW

As someone who loves dragon books but steers clear of shifters- I unintentionally picked up A Fire in The Sky last year and surprising loved it and thought the shifter aspect was done really well/did not IMO feel gross (which is how most make me feel). I loved the characters, liked the world, liked the romantic AND political tension, and loved the plot twist- I was really excited to see where we went in book 2...

Unfortunately I kind of hated the plot of A Scar in the Bone...

I genuinely felt like the sequel was not planned while writing the first book- it felt made/convenient. I understand not wanting a cliffhanger at the end of the first book but there kind of still was... the plot of this book would have felt better if Fell died and/or his brother was made aware in the first book. To me, it just really felt forced in to make another book.

I ended up skimming a lot as it was quite slow and lacking a plot overall... with the one year time jump she has already learned the prides ways and trained without us but is still sitting around being sad. I really only found one scene impactful and exciting and that was when she goes alone to Stig's camp.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the book or the writing or the characters- all of that felt consistent to the first book.
But like you could skip this whole book when/of the next one comes out and have missed like one easily explainable thing- maybe two.

I do recommend A Fire in the Sky to friends and I am going to pick up the next book (if there is another planned) as I do think that plot will be exciting and more true to the first book- but I don't think I will recommend A Scar in the Bone to friends currently.

As always, I love Sophie's writing. It's always engaging and I never feel like I'm trudging through a story but immersed in it.

I loved the growth and determination of Tamsyn. I feel like she has come in to her own by the end of the story. Being in the Crags has led her to a new way of life, new friends or enemies and a question of is it the life she desires.

I do think the time jump at the beginning isn't the best. I don't understand why the book doesn't pick up right as book one ended. I also am not a fan of Vetr and his interactions with Tamsyn.

I definitely wanted more Fell. The relationship between Tamsyn and Fell is so authentic that the book needed more of that to push it toward how I felt about book 1. Their chemistry is just a 10/10. no notes.

Overall, its a great exploration of Tamsyn and what she's made of. She had to grow and journey to become her best self and I think this book does that!

Thanks so much to Avon, Sophie Jordan and Netgalley for the eARC of this book!

This book was not what I expected. First, there was little to no explanation of what happened before jumping a year ahead. The story was good, but the pieces were discombobulated to me. The ending was random snippets of what other characters were doing. Does this mean there will be more? Does it not? I was confused at the end. This book was given to me as an ARC but all thoughts and opinions are my own.

*Thank you William Morrow | HarperCollins Publishers for a pre-approved eARC in exchange for an honest review*

Oy where do I start... I think on the good side, Tamsyn is still an icon and I loved getting to read more of her progression as a dragon and I thought the ending was good and worth the read. Unfortunately, I think the rest was just a ride on the struggle bus. I think having a year time jump at the start of the book was just a bit too much to catch up on and I would have liked it a bit closer to the end of the previous book. I was also not a fan of how icky some of the characters in this book were with no redeeming qualities. Even though I love Tamsyn, she was a bit whiny and annoying (for good reason I suppose) throughout the book. I was hoping for more because I loved the first book and had recommended it to everyone I could.

3.75 ⭐️ Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to ARC read this book. I absolutely loved A Fire in the Sky and I had extremely high hopes for A Scar in the Bone. The book started off a year after the ending of book 1 and I was very confused as to what was going on. I found the pacing to be off and there wasn't much plot or action until closer to the end of the book which made it really difficult to stay interested in the story. I do absolutely love Sophie Jordan's writing style, so that was enjoyable. I am interested to see how book 3 picks up.

Books two rake place a full year after the first book. You have Tamsyn who is told that Fell is dead, but through their bond she knows it isn’t true but his brother tries to convince her to move on and be with him..she decides to leave the pride in search of him and gets in to some trouble along the way.

I was so excited when I started this book to return to the world that I left behind in 'A Fire in the Sky'. When we last left the world Fell, the Lord of the Borderlands, and his bride, Tamsyn, we have discovered that Fell has a long-lost brother, and that there are more dragons hiding in the mountains known as the Crags.

This book starts a bit awkwardly: Tamsyn is alone, Fell is presumed dead, and his brother, Vetr is definitely trying to worm his way into Tamsyn's bed. However, we don't know anything that has led to this moment. When we last left them, Fell was alive and well and staring down the brother that he never knew he had. Slowly, over the course of the first part of the novel we learn bits and pieces of what has happened in the year that spans between this novel and the first in the series.

While the first book kept me enthralled from start to end, the pacing of this second novel was a little harder for me. I believe we focus a lot on Tamsyn to see her come into her own, both as a woman who is no longer the whipping girl for her kingdom, and as a dragon, and Sophie Jordan delivers strongly on both. I do wish we weren't apart from Fell during the novel, because I feel like we never fully get to see their romance evolve into the great love story that Tamsyn hypes it up to be in her mind. I know that they are bonded, or mates, but I do feel like we didn't get a full progression of their romance in the first novel, and I would have liked to have seen more of it in this second one.

We get to see plenty of characters both old and new in this novel. Stig has me both screaming and crying for how far he has fallen since we are introduced to him in book one. While the pacing slows a little in the middle of the book, it quickly ramps up again to its climax near the end, but to say that I'm surprised at how the novel ends is an understatement. I never expected things to end as they did, and the actions of the main characters seem a bit out of character for many of the people involved. (Like how quickly Tamsyn just dismissed Kerstin after everything that the young dragon had done to aid her. I feel like this is going to come back and bite her in the butt in the future, and it does give the possibility that Sophie Jordan did this perhaps to be able to bring back Kerstin as an antagonist to Tamsyn in a future novel for her actions.) However, with the epilogue of the novel giving us an idea that all is perhaps not well in the kingdom, Sophie Jordan neatly sets us up for what we could perhaps expect in a third novel to this series.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, even if it didn't leave me as enthralled as its predecessor. I hope that our main characters get to enjoy some peace for a time, as we're left with the feeling that book 3 is going to throw them right back into the fire as far as politics - both dragon and human - go. I can't wait to see what the future holds for these characters.

Thank you to NetGalley, Avon, and Sophie Jordan for providing me with an eARC of this novel for review.

The writing in this book was spectacular, unfortunately there wasn’t a plot to follow, making this a difficult book to read.

Readers were so invested in Tamsyn and Fell’s story, so for us to not get that after they worked so hard to get together in the first book made it difficult to read this one. Not to mention, the tone promise was almost too different from the first book so that it felt like I was reading an entirely new book not the second book in this series. This made it difficult to connect to the story, the characters, and in turn, a challenge to continue to want to continue reading.

The plot structure was also non-existent, and I couldn’t get into a story that didn’t have a point. What was the purpose of this story? It was unclear, and hard to follow, thus hard to want to pick it up.

This book also had a couple points where there was unnecessary description to set up a scene, I can commend the author on imbuing us with the show not tell but it was unnecessary. One such incident was at the 54% mark, where we’re given the description of the skelm and your heart is racing as you try to figure out what happens next, until there’s about 4 pages of description/reminding us who the skelm are and it made me put my kindle down, because as the reader, I can remember who these people are, what I need is to follow the heart-thumping scene and to keep pace with the events, not be given a description that I don’t need.

Overall, the writing made up for the lack of plot and lack of character development, but not enough. It unfortunately wouldn’t be something I’d recommend on my booktok.

Maybe it's just me, but I found A Scar in the Bone to be a confusing and disappointing follow up to A Fire in the Sky.

This book was pretty entertaining, but started to lose me in the last half. The characters started out really engaging and captivating in the first half, but I felt myself losing interest along the way. Bummer, because it started so strong!

This picks up a year after where A FIRE IN THE SKY left off. I really liked the first book… this one? Not nearly as much. We don’t get another POV until over 75% of the way through, the pacing felt awkward, and the ending felt too abrupt.

The second this hit my hands I couldn't resist the chance to not sit and DEVOUR it! I love everything that Sophie writes and I was so eager for this book. Just all the stars and I am sad it is already over.

Rating -🐉🐉🐉🐉 3.5/5
Genre- Romantasy, Adventure
Spice - 🌶️🌶️ 2/5
Pace -medium-fast
vibes- finding oneself, finding your voice, breaking free of control

Tropes- Enemies to lovers, Shifters, secret princess, found family


Summary: Tamsyn has discovered what she is, but is still discovering who she is. For the last year, she has been living with the other new generation dragons and training to be able to survive around both humans or dragons. Without Fell though, her life feels empty. His twin brother wants her for his own, but she can't shake the mate bond with Fell that still feels alive.




Review (spoilers): I think A Scar in the Bone has a bit of second-book syndrome. The book felt like it only had character development but no plot development. Tamsyn decided who she was going to be and we met a number of new characters but the plot only inched forward otherwise. Fell was absent and buried for most of the book and my one character critique would be that he seemed to somehow be just as developed with his magic as Tamsyn who had been training the whole time. Do I still want to read the next book? Absolutely! I think that this is shaping up to be a great series.

This sequel is action packed and emotional! The character development for Tamsyn stole the show for me! You feel her heartache and gain such an appreciation for her ability to survive despite the trauma she endures. The portrayal of her feeling alone even among the pride made me want to hug my girl! I loved watching her come into her own and taking control!

Without giving anything away, just know you are in for adventure, suspense, and some more romance! And the reunion scene….just WOW! That was intense! I was also excited to see a certain character get what they deserved! I loved getting more info on the world and dragon lore as well. The ending isn’t a bad cliffhanger but the epilogue has me ready for what will happen next and hopefully get answers to some unanswered questions!

Thank you to Avon/ Harper Voyager, NetGalley, and the author for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

A Scar in the Bone is the sequel to Sophie Jordan’s A Fire in the Sky. The following review contains spoilers for the first book, but not for the second. Proceed with according caution.

It has been a year since Tamsyn and her husband Fell discovered that they were actually dragons and met a pride of others like them – including the twin brother Fell didn’t know he had. Almost immediately afterward, he and his brother were attacked by a rival pride while out flying and Fell was lost. Tamsyn is only now beginning to climb out of the depths of her grief. She’s hoping to make herself valuable to the pride who have taken her in. Although they have housed her and trained her all this time, she still doesn’t feel like one of them.

Part of the issue is her inability to leave her cares for the human world entirely behind. She finds herself straddling two seemingly incompatible worlds. She does not know how she can be both while humans are still determined to hunt dragons to extinction. Still, she cannot help but worry for what she has left behind: her sisters and those who inhabit the lands her husband protected. They are under grievous threat, and from someone Tamsyn had once believed she could trust.

A Fire in the Sky was a lot of fun, so I was very much looking forward to this sequel. My hopes were high, but unfortunately the start of this book dashed them pretty quickly. Immediately we learn that the male lead has died. We’ve not only lost the relationship that the entire last book was building toward, but also one of the two POVs. Even worse, Tamsyn’s resulting grief has brought her so low that nearly all of her character growth has dissipated. It really pulls the rug out from under the reader. This was right after I accidentally noticed a spoiler in the table of contents of all places. I perhaps would have made the same deduction from foreshadowing, but the prior knowledge took away from the emotional impact of some key moments.

I had enjoyed the first book enough that I was willing to overlook a rough start. The dragons were what I was most excited for. In the last installment, readers learned that there are different types of dragons, each with unique powers. As I was hoping, we got to see a lot more of those this time. Battle and training scenes were brought to a new level, and the wide variety of abilities were used in creative ways. However, I wanted more dragon. All the dragons we meet also have a human form, and they spend most of their time in that shape. This is even true for those who hate humans. Many of them may as well have been humans with magical abilities instead.

Overall, it felt like this book needed another round of developmental edits. It wasn’t until after the halfway point when the pace and plot finally picked up. Even then there were a handful of issues, leaving it unable to make up for the first half. Some paragraphs were self-contradictory. A couple of times narration seemed to forget which form a character was in and describe the wrong anatomy. Hardest to get over was the unclear arc of this book’s villain. The character in question has made a big change from the first book without adequately demonstrating how that happened. It takes too long for it to be believable, although it becomes so as the story progresses.

I wanted to like this one more than I did. Ultimately, I felt like the first one was better. This series is set in the same world as the author’s Firelight series, and I may still check that one out. I do like the magic system and the world that’s been created here, so I’m considering exploring more. I read the first book and saw a lot of potential for the series, but this installment hasn’t reached it.