Hm. 
 Hmmmmmm. 
 Die For Me was an unexpectedly good ride for me. I gave it two stars at the time, but eventually it crept up to 3.5, just because it reminds me of this really weird sesame cookie I tried lately that tasted weird, and that I should have hated, but actually ended up really liking. Is that an awful metaphor? Meh, probably. But it's really late and I'm super hungry. 
 Until I Die teeters on a sharp precipice, swaying to and fro between my love and my...mild dislike. I don't hate anything about these books. How can you hate them? There's not enough substance to hate. It's just Kate wandering from mishap to mishap, and that's kind of a summary of both books, and likely the last one too (which I intend to read. Oh, don't you worry about that!). 
 My main problem with this series is that I don't care at all about the love story, mostly because Vincent, to me, is like a big slice of walking cardboard. Like a dry shard of shortcrust pastry. It's not that he's a bad guy - in fact, he's pretty nice. He's just bland. So, so bland. I feel bad for him, he's so bland. 
 And even the side characters aren't that interesting, except for Gaspard, who I love, and Violette (view spoiler)[who I thought I loved until she went full Shane. You NEVER go full Shane. (hide spoiler)]. Ironically, it's the je ne sais quoi that this whole series lacks. Shame, since the mythology is really interesting and unique (despite the info-dumps it's delivered in). 
 Again, I suppose it's another YA romance that could be solved quite simply: the heroine walking away. Kate, walk away. Seriously. A dude you've known for perhaps three months can't possibly monopolize your life so ferociously that you're willing to lay down your life for a few short years with him. Kate can't just let it lie, though, can she? The solution, then, is to just suck it up and make it work, just be the aging one in the couple. You can't fight time and you can't ask your partner to injure themselves for your benefit. 
 It's a pretty straightforward ultimatum: do the Genevieve and Phillipe thing, or walk away from this relationship. You can't possibly expect this to be easy. 
 It was this that ran through my head the whole time I was reading, that all of this was more painful and more trouble than it was worth. And it seems tragic for this seventeen year old girl to be thinking of how many years of her life she has left, to be mapping out her entire existence around a boyfriend she barely knows. I don't even know why I'm bothering to debate this anymore, since it's a class A YA trope. We've seen it a thousand times over: the world shifts for our love, there's nothing more important than you and me, our love is worth agonizing, spine-snapping pain, a few picnics in the park mean that we're destined to be together forever. While there are subversive moments - i.e. Kate acknowledging this new obsession with age and questioning whether she and Vincent even have a future, all of it's nullified with her actions. And that's a shame, really. 
 All I can really say is that this book was fine. It wasn't what it could have been, for what it could have been was epic. But it was written in a sort of low-lying, low-key, slow moving way that tore the urgency and passion out of the story. There's no fire here. It's more like a lump of cigarette ash. 
 Meh, three stars. It was fine.