Many, many thanks Usborne Publishing for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review


Black Moon is the wonderful, and I do mean wonderful, conclusion to The Broken Trilogy, aka the series that I've been foaming at the mouth over for being one of the freshest things I've read in a while.

I'm glad to say that this book did much better things for me than it's predecessor. No withholding-of-information as a plot device, no jerky pacing, better sense of character. It was a dream!

Black Moon opens right in the thick of things - with Amity and Ingo working of the resistance, and with Collie working as an inside man in the enemy camp. It was the first and only book in the series to give me flashbacks to another very popular book - Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay, in this case. But here's where it gets interesting: Black Moon does so much better than Mockingjay, especially in terms of being a war novel. It was very well paced, fantasically well-woven, and the main character didn't sit around completely useless for half the book.*

But I digress. The point is that, in Black Moon, the ball was always rolling. There was always something going on, and each narrator had an active role in how the story progressed. I literally read 95% of this mammoth book in one sitting, and only had to stop because I had a load of assignments randomly dumped into my lap. It was that engrossing.

I also love, love, loved the characters in this one. They all disappointed me a little in Darkness Following, but man, their development was solid. Collis Reed, in particular, just kind of blew me away with his developmental arc. Like, listen. I know he isn't everyone's favorite character. As a person, he's kind of messed up. I get it. But as a character? He was the best thing in Weatherly's arsenal.

Collis Reed was the grey character of my dreams. He was wonderfully complex and flawed. A character whose hubris turned out to be his determination to be better, all because he didn't really understand what it meant to be a better person - not really. It was brilliant. I adored where he left him in the second book; at a cross-roads where his character could either step over fully to the dark side, crawl back to the light, or waffle about in the grey zones. His arc in this book was probably my favorite thing about this series. His journey was wonderful.**

Really, I could go on and on about how much I loved this book. But in the interest of remaining mostly spoiler-free (turns out there is no real way to review a sequel/series conclusion without spoiling the other books) I'm not going to.

I will however tell you about the three tiny things that made me dock a star from this otherwise fabulous read.

1) It could get a little predictable
Not in a way that had me calling every single plot line, mind. But just... You know how you can tell how certain things are going to go, just because you've read enough books in the same genre to have an idea about their patterns? Yeah. That. But listen, like I said with the first book, Weatherly still manages to make even the most predictable twists come with a surprise.

2) I didn't like the way Collis and Amity SUDDENLY didn't have as much in common as we all thought.
I can understand WHY it was done? The author probably wanted to make it clear that there was absolutely no love triangle in the book, just a woman who rightfully had a change of heart. I understand. And I'm beyond thankful that Amity never got back together with Collis. But here's the thing. These incompatibilities in their relationship that just randomly sprung up? They sorta... cheapen the relationship. No matter what Collis did, he and Amity did love each other.

And yes, she eventually does move on, and she and Ingo grow to love each other very much.

So making Collis and Amity's relationship suddenly mean less that it originally did takes away from the emotion of it all. Amity moving on from Collis meant more when they were they were compatible and real. SPOILER:

Amity's love for Ingo meant more, when her relationship will Collis was stronger

. You take away the foundation of Collis and Amity, and you make everything else sort of paler than it could have been. Shame.

3) The building of relationship feelings was kinda... eh.
I'm starting to think that the author does better with established relationships than she just with building relationships from the ground up? Mac and Sephy were always the pairing to beat. Ingo and Amity were kinda... boring when they first started falling for each other. But when they got together? Good shit, man. Shippable shit.

Those were my issues. As I said, tiny in the grand scheme of things. This book was an honest delight to read. Riveting from beginning to end. And I recommend it to EVERYONE who loves YA Dystopia.

READ IT!!!!!!!!

*Okay, okay. In all fairness to Katniss, she was suffering from severe PTSD. I get it. Her grief was believable. But while she was laying about useless, we never got to see action happening outside of her bubble of misery, which is where I think Mockingjay went wrong.

**

There's also a small part of me, the writer part, that kind of wishes he died? I feel like that would have been the perfect ending for Collis? But idk, I just love the journey he made, man.