I'm sad to say I expected a little more from this, though it wasn't bad. But it could've been a lot better.
You know how sometimes you have both bad news and good news, and you don’t know which one to get to first? I’m going to go with the good news first:
(Disclaimer(s): neither the good news nor the bad news are in any particular order, just the order they popped up in my mind. Also, I received my copy of this book from BookishFirst, and I’m honestly not sure if it’s an arc of not (whoops), so there might be some changes from my review versus the published copy now. Lastly, there are probably spoilers from the original trilogy in this review, so if you haven’t read them, you probably shouldn’t read this review or this book yet. Just saying.)
1) Characters
It was interesting to see Zu as her own character, breaking out of her shell on multiple occasions and discovering who she is. She is firm in her beliefs, she holds her own against her opponents, and she doesn’t let her guard down easily, which makes it easy to respect her as a character.
I also love our new characters Roman and Priyanka! Their unique personalities brought new stuffs to the table; I thought they brought some spice into the novel, and I loved seeing old faces working together with new faces to get stuff done. I’m glad we didn’t get too much of our OG squad; I love them, and I loved seeing them, don’t get me wrong, but it was also nice to broaden the horizons of the world and branch out a bit. Speaking of…
2) The World
Probably my favorite part of reading this book was seeing the world again and seeing what happened after the ending of In the Afterlight went down. I figured everything wouldn’t go to plan, so we get to see a little bit of what went well versus what went wrong, and hopefully our new merged squad can help again (and not make things worse…).
And like I said before, it was fun to see our OG squad, and I thought Bracken did a good job of incorporating those characters and still revolving the story around our new MCs.
There are two main points in my bad news:
1) The Plot (especially the ending)
I know that many of my fellow 3/4 star-givers (hahaha) talked about the plot being slow because the characters drove around a lot. While that it is true, it didn’t actually bother me that much; those drives allowed time for character development and stuffs like that. But there was something that bothered me about the plot, but I’m honestly not sure what. I do know I was very confused at times, as if some of the events and the way Bracken described things just didn’t make sense.
The ending, especially, bothered me a lot. It’s like Bracken knew she couldn’t go over 600 pages so she just whipped something up out of the blue that needed to be developed a lot better. If we’re going to see Zu do all the stuff Bracken wants her to do, we need to see her actually do them. We can’t just skip a huge chunk of time that we’ll probably need for the next book for the sole purpose of getting to a sorta satisfying conclusion.
2) The Romance
Yes, there is romance in this book. And I would totally ship it. Except that there isn’t really any chemistry. You know I hate insta-love as much as the next person, but there has to be some kind of build-up, some kind of attraction. It isn’t developed at all. Suddenly it’s just there, and it kinda feels weird. And that’s so disappointing because RUBY AND LIAM ARE GOALSS. Plus, once it happens, towards the end, it is very emotional and (close to) well-done. But the entire first 3/4 of the book, there isn’t really anything. It isn’t done well, is what I’m trying to say.
Overall, this was an ok read - we get to see our old peeps and meet some new ones, and we get to explore more of the world (sorta) and what happened after In the Afterlight. However, I definitely had big problems with it, things that weighed the story down a lot for me. The plot was just lacking something, and the ending left me pretty unsatisfied. Plus, the story is too romance-heavy to have underdeveloped romance. Basically, if you loved the original trilogy so much you can’t wait to dive back in (like me :) ), then go ahead. And if these two points might weigh it down for you as well, you can still give it a try. That’s up to you and what you think you should spend your time reading :) .
And thanks, BookishFirst, for providing me this novel!
Au revoir!
(Disclaimer(s): neither the good news nor the bad news are in any particular order, just the order they popped up in my mind. Also, I received my copy of this book from BookishFirst, and I’m honestly not sure if it’s an arc of not (whoops), so there might be some changes from my review versus the published copy now. Lastly, there are probably spoilers from the original trilogy in this review, so if you haven’t read them, you probably shouldn’t read this review or this book yet. Just saying.)
1) Characters
It was interesting to see Zu as her own character, breaking out of her shell on multiple occasions and discovering who she is. She is firm in her beliefs, she holds her own against her opponents, and she doesn’t let her guard down easily, which makes it easy to respect her as a character.
I also love our new characters Roman and Priyanka! Their unique personalities brought new stuffs to the table; I thought they brought some spice into the novel, and I loved seeing old faces working together with new faces to get stuff done. I’m glad we didn’t get too much of our OG squad; I love them, and I loved seeing them, don’t get me wrong, but it was also nice to broaden the horizons of the world and branch out a bit. Speaking of…
2) The World
Probably my favorite part of reading this book was seeing the world again and seeing what happened after the ending of In the Afterlight went down. I figured everything wouldn’t go to plan, so we get to see a little bit of what went well versus what went wrong, and hopefully our new merged squad can help again (and not make things worse…).
And like I said before, it was fun to see our OG squad, and I thought Bracken did a good job of incorporating those characters and still revolving the story around our new MCs.
There are two main points in my bad news:
1) The Plot (especially the ending)
I know that many of my fellow 3/4 star-givers (hahaha) talked about the plot being slow because the characters drove around a lot. While that it is true, it didn’t actually bother me that much; those drives allowed time for character development and stuffs like that. But there was something that bothered me about the plot, but I’m honestly not sure what. I do know I was very confused at times, as if some of the events and the way Bracken described things just didn’t make sense.
The ending, especially, bothered me a lot. It’s like Bracken knew she couldn’t go over 600 pages so she just whipped something up out of the blue that needed to be developed a lot better. If we’re going to see Zu do all the stuff Bracken wants her to do, we need to see her actually do them. We can’t just skip a huge chunk of time that we’ll probably need for the next book for the sole purpose of getting to a sorta satisfying conclusion.
2) The Romance
Yes, there is romance in this book. And I would totally ship it. Except that there isn’t really any chemistry. You know I hate insta-love as much as the next person, but there has to be some kind of build-up, some kind of attraction. It isn’t developed at all. Suddenly it’s just there, and it kinda feels weird. And that’s so disappointing because RUBY AND LIAM ARE GOALSS. Plus, once it happens, towards the end, it is very emotional and (close to) well-done. But the entire first 3/4 of the book, there isn’t really anything. It isn’t done well, is what I’m trying to say.
Overall, this was an ok read - we get to see our old peeps and meet some new ones, and we get to explore more of the world (sorta) and what happened after In the Afterlight. However, I definitely had big problems with it, things that weighed the story down a lot for me. The plot was just lacking something, and the ending left me pretty unsatisfied. Plus, the story is too romance-heavy to have underdeveloped romance. Basically, if you loved the original trilogy so much you can’t wait to dive back in (like me :) ), then go ahead. And if these two points might weigh it down for you as well, you can still give it a try. That’s up to you and what you think you should spend your time reading :) .
And thanks, BookishFirst, for providing me this novel!
Au revoir!