This series is as infuriating sometimes as it is fascinating. I started out accepting/liking - but not loving Jack as the hero and would-be guy for Evie in PP, although I was really more interested in Evie's character development and really, it wasn't like she had much choice. But even then, I was put off by the type (depiction?) of love between Evie and Jack: basically, to me it was teenage hormones. So a good looking decent hearted girl and a good looking decent hearted guy (with a sympathetic back story) survives the apocalypse and relies on each other while on a journey? Well of course they'd develop feelings for each other. But prior to The Flash, Jack was more like a jackass. Stealing her boyfriend's phone to listen to her, quite clearly lusting after Evie solely based on her looks and some messed up sense of she's-too-good-for-me-to-have, getting pissed off because Evie had decided to sleep with her then boyfriend - like seriously, WTF? Can you even call that romance? Anyway, at least I learned to accept and even like Jack by the end of PP. 
 Then came EK. Aric and Evie's relationship started up even more ah, messed up than any objections I had about Jack-the-jackass from the start of PP, but I respected it more partly because there's nothing like reincarnated lives + life and death on the line to force characters to mature. The stakes have been raised and Aric's character/actions make sense. So Aric has beheaded Evie and kidnapped/tortured her, well--at least he's not being an immature teenager drooling over the hot girl because he saw her half naked in a car, and plotting to steal her boyfriend's phone. 
 By the end of EK, I'd had enough of Aric, although I believed Cole deliberately went with the whole medieval coercion and stuff just to show that Evie could stand on her own. At that point, I wanted Evie to keep growing up and choose neither of them. She's supposed to be an Empress, not a damsel mooning over which knight she wants to save her. Please. 
 As for DOW the filler book -- well, I felt like slapping Evie if she dithered once again over the whole Aric-or-Jack thing. Head's up girl, if you don't know which one you love more and they have no intention of sharing you, therefore you must choose and you can't make up your mind, YOU DON'T LOVE EITHER ENOUGH. This book was 90% about Aric-or-Jack and 10% about the progression of the Arcana game and dissolution of the post-apocalyptic world. 
 The ending left me fuming because I could see it AND Evie's reasoning coming from a mile away, and as expected, it was as lame as I thought. [**SPOILER ALERT**] I knew she would choose Jack but honestly, for the reason of "well, I met him/loved him first"?? (Which also sounds a damn lot like "well, I slept with him first, so I must have loved him first" -- that is some amazing backwards reasoning and totally unrealistic. Why do YA romances insist on depicting first love as the only acceptable, real, possible love? It's particularly irresponsible when anyone who's past the age of high school can probably look back on their own experiences and realize that at best, it was immature love. Who you are and what you love at 16 is usually nowhere close to who you are and what you love at, say, 26.) But seriously? If she had really, completely loved him first, exactly HOW did she fall in love with Aric? And if presumably Cole's idea of love is that you can do this, then what exactly is love worth when at any point, someone else can come along and Evie can TRUUUUULY love that person too? Didn't Jack say that he couldn't give his heart to Selena when it was already given to Evie? Something's contradictory here... 
 Not to mention all my love of Jack that finally developed in the second half of PP dried up with his constant "Evie and Jack" and "mine" claims. If a guy ever tried to convince me that I should be with him for the rest of our lives by repeating our names together like a dozen times, that would be the last straw for me. It's like watching middle school kids pass love notes or write EG + JD 4EVER <3!! in their notebooks. At least Aric in this book is changing, trying to do the best for Evie and learning *how* to love. Jack sounded more like a broken record yo-yoing between irritating confidence (we belong tooooogetheeerrrr!) and low self-esteem (he makes HIS decision without bothering to wait for hers--the very decision he's pressured her about and whined about the entire book--and just ups and ditches her? Is this really the start of lifelong relationship and commitment? /eyeroll) 
 Which would all be a moot point if Jack actually died, but given that no lifeless body was seen/found and the author ended on a cliffhanger, I'd bet you a hundred bucks he's not actually dead. Heck, I know he isn't dead and yet I WISH he were, if only to stop the stupid waffling Evie does. The best I can hope for is that he stays gone for at least part of the next book so Evie can pull her head out of her non-epic romance love triangle and figure out what she wants to do to end the game. Like consult that grandma she basically forgot about throughout DoW.