Better than the first, definitely. This one's got a lot more action and a lot more facts. There are a lot of things you could unearth in this riverbed of a book. There's something missing, though. For me. It has something to do with how Ethan loves Lena and how their relationship came to be. In the first book, I didn't feel the OTP pulsating from its pages. Now, I guess I could feel it a little. Maybe it's because the concept of this book revolved around how their relationship was seemingly falling apart and why they cannot be together but they proved all of the things preventing them from being with each other wrong. Some parts bored me but it got more exciting as it neared the end. It's a 3.5 in my book.