"There is nothing stronger than people who endure the worst hardships in the world, and still raise their fists at the start of a new day to fight all over again.”

I absolutely did not expect this book to make me cry - and boy did it make me cry!!!!!!!!

Second books in a series are rarely as good and exciting as the first one was, but I feel like “Girls of Storm and Shadow” was a truly solid sequel!! The new characters introduced are amazing, and you can’t help but fall in love with them immediately - speaking of which, I HAVE BEEF WITH YOU MS. NGAN, you’re going to make us fall in absolute head over heels love with Bo and then kill him off??!?!?!?! Those chapters were PHYSICALLY painful!!! I was sobbing and could barely get through them!!! Justice for Bo!!!!!!!

Aside from that - I also found it very interesting to see how the characters we already knew and loved changed and grew even more in this second installment. Lei is a force to be reckoned with, and her strength will always inspire me. The fact that she’s been through so much trauma, so much hurt, and she still has the ability to get up and fight for what she believes in... that’s something that I wish I had more of myself.

Wren’s journey has also come as a bit of a surprise, but I enjoyed the development of her character. We get to see more of who she is in relation to the way she’s been raised by her father, and in finding out about her birth pendant and about the “Sacrifice” that she’s convinced she has to make, we can see why she can be a bit out of tune with her emotions, and act like the well-oiled machine that she’s been taught to become. Her power also grows exponentially, and both Wren and everyone around her have to deal with the consequences. I was extremely proud of Lei for standing up for herself and telling Wren that it’s not ok to hide so many things from her, and I absolutely felt her disbelief and rage at finding out that the woman she loves is responsible for not one, but *many* terrible things, all for the sake of the mission.

I’m excited to read the last book in the series!! Since we left off with Lei being captured by Naja and taken to the Hidden Palace, I’m very curious to see her meeting the King again, I’m excited to hear more about the new shaman-warrior hybrid army that he’s building and how that will come into play, since we only got a small snippet of it in this book, and I can’t wait to see how the story ends, even if it will be very bittersweet.