Firelight

Stars: 3.5 Rounded to 4 Stars Start Date: 08/18/25Ending Date:08/23/08Genre: Paranormal/Historical Romance Form: AudiobookPage Count: 372Publishing Date: 01/31/12Point of View: 3rd PersonSetting: Victorian England Content Warning: Sexual Content, Language, Violence, Blood, Murder My Blog: https://tanyasreading.wordpress.com/2025/08/30/firelight-by-kristen-callahan/I decided to read this one again since I was kind of stuck on the other reads and have been craving to reread this one. This book series doesn't get talk about enough because I rarely see it be talked about on Booktok. While I still enjoyed this book due to the Romance, Beauty and the Beast Vibes, and Murder plot, it wasn't as good as I remember. I love the Beauty and Beast/ East of the Sun and West of the Moon elements of the story. I don't know why it gives me The Mummy vibes as well. I guess since some of the backstory  took place in Egypt.  The murder mystery plot was pretty good since it was giving me Jack the ripper vibes.I liked Miranda being the FMC since she was a badass but she needed a little more development. Miranda just having fire powers with no explanation just felt like a plot device which it was. In the prologue, she's 19 but in the actual story which takes place three years after, she's 22 years old. I like Archer as the MMC but he was just a brooding, tortured, horny mess that barely told Miranda anything unless someone else told her things which forced him to tell her.  I'm still trying to figure out how a certain body part still works when half of his body is supposed to be cursed. He has immorality due to the curse. I still like the romance since it was BATB inspired but the beginning of it was insta-lust since Archer was pining for her for three years. I started to feel like Archer just wanted to get into her petticoat and kind of went on and about her beauty. Like we get it, she beautiful and she makes you stiff down there. You don't have to got overbroad with it. Also they kept their secrets to each other too long which he still hiding things from her after she told her truth. Also certain scenes I thought were hot before, felt cringy relistening to them. Needs better world building because it just felt like regular Victorian England. Not a Victorian England with supernatural beings like werewolves, glass creatures and other things roaming.To be under 400 pages, some parts drag on too long with too much dialogue and info dumped in certain points and not enough action. I started to get bored but still held my interest to finish my reread. Like we were heading to the climax of the story and we were still getting information that should have been revealed when Miranda and Archer revealed each other's truths.Needs better world building because it just felt like regular Victorian England. Not a Victorian England with supernatural beings like werewolves, glass creatures ,and other things roaming.The villain needed more development with their motivations and backstory. They felt shallow in their motivations as to why they were doing it. Especially the fact they barely got any page time in the book. Honestly it was too many characters in this story that didn't get developed.I do like Miranda sisters which I'm glad they each get their own book focusing on them since they were barely developed in this one.One of the best characters of this book was Ian aka McKinnon which is probably the reason why he is the focus of the next book. Honestly, him and Miranda would have made a good couple.  He was such a really good troll to Acher and told Miranda more about what Acher is hiding than Acher himself.I still love this book and it's still a good debut novel but rereading made me realize I rated it too high.I think its a 3.5 rounded to a four.If you want a Spicy Paranormal/Historical Romance with Beauty and Beast Vibes with a Murder mystery, I will still recommend this always.