Thirty-three hours and thirty-four minutes. That figure is the single most important thing about this audiobook, and the column below it knows so. The four-star response warns you to "buckle up and settle in." The three-star response says the book "felt stretched past its limits" and complains about material that was not needed. Nobody argues that it is short. What the responses disagree about is whether that length is generosity or excess, and where you fall on that question decides the purchase.
What Kayla Edwards Delivers
Loren Calla and Darien Cassel thought they were done. The Terran Imperator blackmails Loren into working for him, with one obstacle: he wants her magic, and her magic seems to have gone. She agrees to everything anyway, to keep Darien and the other Devils safe, and then has to keep the arrangement secret from the person she is protecting. Meanwhile Darien inherits a throne he does not want, is asked to help dismantle the illegal arms trade his father once profited from, and starts seeing creatures nobody else can see.
Two plots, two perspectives, one city. Angelthene is doing as much work here as either lead, and the reviewers notice: one calls the world building and the magic system the level-up of this installment, another says the story "picks right up from book 1" and brings "Lots more info and characters and their back stories." The secrets are the engine, and at least one respondent found them physically stressful, which in a book of this length is a genuine review.
Skylar Phaup, at three stars, files the objection everyone else is quietly answering. If the first book was slow, this one "had me in a dead limp," and the complaint is precise, not sour: too many stretches that were not needed, alongside action packed so densely into others that it read as overdone. That entry is also careful to say it comes from someone who usually likes everything. A generous reader who struggled carries more weight than a hostile one ever could. The badge sits at 4.2 across eight votes while the five written grades read 5, 4, 5, 3 and 5, so whatever produced that badge is doing something these five people cannot account for.
What Kayla Edwards Gets Right
Wen Ross carries the whole of it. One credited voice, thirty-three and a half hours, and a narrative that keeps alternating between two leads whose storylines only touch at the seams, plus a supporting cast the reviewers name in threes. Podium Audio released it on January 7, 2025. No second reader is listed, which for a dual-perspective fantasy romance of this scale is the most consequential production decision on the page and the one no listener here comments on.
Found family is the draw the column returns to. Sydni's five-star entry says outright that anyone who likes found family will find this book delivered, and names the attachment forming around the Devils and two characters the description never mentions. That respondent had wanted more of it in book one and reports getting it here. For listeners who choose fantasy romance by the shape of its friendships more than its couple, that is the most useful sentence on the page.
Enthusiasm in this column runs high and specific. One reader finished the sequel and went straight into the third book without pausing. Another rates the first volume phenomenal and reports that this one topped it, crediting a large-scale plot with a surprise built into it. Nobody is describing a modest improvement. The people who liked this book liked it a great deal more than they liked the one before it.
Where Kayla Edwards Loses Some Ground
One response is typed entirely in decorative letterforms rather than ordinary characters, a styled alphabet that reads as bold text and is not bold text. It opens with an aphorism about someone always playing the cards better than you, quotes a line about a new addiction, and then stops mid-question. Whether screen-reading software renders those glyphs as words is a fair question, and a review nobody can read is a review that helps nobody. Style ate the substance.
Book two also assumes book one. The description opens on a sequel to City of Gods and Monsters and expects you to know why Loren and Darien were relieved to be back in their old routines. Reviewers reinforce the point from both directions, one noting the story resumes immediately from the previous volume, another comparing the two directly. Nothing here is written for a newcomer, and the series field confirms it: House of Devils, position two.
Length, again, because the record is oddly forthcoming about it. The dissenting response measures the book in "pages and descriptions that weren't needed," which is print vocabulary on an audio listing and a reminder of where these opinions were formed. Entries here break off in mid-sentence too, one of them just as it starts to explain what the romance does, another mid-word at the exact moment it turns from praise to reservation. Three of the five stop that way. The most interesting sentences in this column are the ones the display would not carry.
Who Should Pick Up City of Souls and Sinners
If you want a city with real politics in it, and you read for immersion over pace, this is built for you. The description promises love and loss, light and darkness, and a battle between good and evil where you cannot always tell which is which, and for once the reviewers back the claim up: the secrets, the shifting loyalties and a lead who cannot tell allies from enemies are what they write about. So is anyone who finished the opening volume and wants to know whether the sequel earns its hours: the column says yes by four voices to one. Thirty-three hours at a normal listening rate is several weeks of evenings, which suits a story built to be lived in.
Hold off if you have not read City of Gods and Monsters, since this recording begins in the middle of a relationship and a city you are expected to recognize. Hold off if slow middles defeat you, because the one dissent describes exactly that and describes it carefully. And hold off if a single voice across two alternating perspectives is not how you like your fantasy read. Start with book one, then decide whether you have thirty-three hours to give this one.
