Disclaimer: I bought this book for book club. Support your authors and read books with friends! All opinions are my own. 

 

Book: Powerless 

 

Author: Lauren Roberts 

 

Book Series: The Powerless Trilogy Book 1 

 

Rating: 2/5 

 

Diversity: BIPOC coded characters 

 

Recommended For...: Young Adult Readers, Romantasy, Fantasy, Enemies to Lovers, Magic, Dystopia 

 

Publication Date: January 31, 2023 

 

Genre: YA Romantasy 

 

Age Relevance: 14+ (gore, death, discrimination, genocide, language, romance, sexual innuendos, poverty, alcohol consumption, panic attack, violence, grief, torture) 

 

Explanation of CWs: There are scenes that show violence, blood gore, death, and torture. There is discrimination shown in the book and a genocide is currently ongoing. There is romance in the book and some very slight sexual innuendos. Extreme poverty is shown and mentioned. There are a couple of scenes showing alcohol consumption. There is a panic attack detailed in the book. There are scenes of grief. 

 

If This Was a Taylor Swift Song: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things 

 

Publisher: Simon and Schuster 

 

Pages: 523 

 

Synopsis: Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya—the exceptional, the empowered, the Elites. The powers these Elites have possessed for decades were graciously gifted to them by the Plague, though not all were fortunate enough to both survive the sickness and reap the reward. Those born Ordinary are just that—ordinary. And when the king decreed that all Ordinaries be banished in order to preserve his Elite society, lacking an ability suddenly became a crime—making Paedyn Gray a felon by fate and a thief by necessity. Surviving in the slums as an Ordinary is no simple task, and Paedyn knows this better than most. Having been trained by her father to be overly observant since she was a child, Paedyn poses as a Psychic in the crowded city, blending in with the Elites as best she can in order to stay alive and out of trouble. Easier said than done. When Paeydn unsuspectingly saves one of Ilyas princes, she finds herself thrown into the Purging Trials. The brutal competition exists to showcase the Elites’ powers—the very thing Paedyn lacks. If the Trials and the opponents within them don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for certainly will if he discovers what she is—completely Ordinary. 

 

Review: I’m gonna start off this review by saying I don’t like this book. I finished the book, struggled with it for almost a year to do so, but I did finish it. For the positives I felt like the overall worldbuilding was amazing and I am intrigued to know how this all ends. However, that’s where all my praise ends. 

 

This book obviously takes a lot of inspiration from The Hunger Games and Red Queen, but so much so to a degree that I didn’t see a lot of individuality in the book that could make it stand apart from these two books. The romance is very cringe and not only are there too many red flags with both of the love interests, there’s a completely unnecessary love triangle. Around the middle of the book, the plot just completely disappeared and we went from “I’m having to survive everyday” to “tea and crumpets, nothing is wrong”. The pacing also became all screwed up in the middle as well and I’m not sure who the editor was but they either didn’t have a lot of time to fully dedicate their services to this book or this is some new horrible trend in publishing where it’s a competition to have the most pages in a book no matter how unrelated content makes it into the book. I personally think a good 200-250 pages could have been taken out of this book with more editing. There’s no sense of danger after awhile, the romance is known, and the book just became so blah. It was also so unnecessarily confusing. What is the point of these Trials? Why are you putting royals and higher ups in a fight that might kill them? Why is nothing ever really fully explained in this book? And just to prove I’m not an idiot who didn’t fully read the book, I read this book in a book club and between 9 people we were all confused and couldn’t explain why things that were happening in the book were happening in the book. Personally, I think Paedyn’s POV should have been the only POV in this book. The others were entirely unnecessary and Kai and Kitt’s eventually just became bad fanfic-styled writing about oogling over Y/N. This series will be one that I won’t be reading anymore of. 

 

Verdict: In short, this book sucks in my opinion. Hopefully you have a better experience!