Reread Review

Rereading the books in the grishaverse has been a study in just how bad my memory is, apparently. To be fair, I did last read these books in 2016, and so much has happened since then. However, it was seriously funny how little I remembered, or remembered but thought was in a different book (I legit thought some of the events of SOC were actually part of Crooked Kingdom?? How???)

I never felt an ache to reread these books particularly, even though I had loved them, but I immediately remembered just how much I loved these characters as soon as I started. There's just something about these crows, and they seriously have the best banter sometimes. Some conversations are also just plain a mess because they are so chaotic, but I loved it. I love them!

Leigh did such a fantastic job of creating strong characters in this book. Not just in terms of physical or mental strength necessarily, but just how recognizable and distinguishable they are from one another. The POVs remain distinguishable even with the amount of them there are, and you honestly wouldn't even need the names at the beginning of chapters to figure out who was the narrator at the moment. They also all feel integral, as all the POVs add a different focus and character insight when telling the story. You could never have had just one or two narrators and had the same effect.

I believe this was one of my first heist books, or one where the heist was almost the entire plot, and I remember loving how this book used the trope and adapted it to this world with magic. While this book has far less magic than the original trilogy, I still love how you can see it in the background of the whole story. It just adds an extra layer to the plot, to the characters, to everything.

I can't wait to reread Crooked Kingdom now, especially considering how little I most likely remember (seeing as I thought most of SOC was actually taking place during CK instead...)