charliauthor's reviews
524 reviews

Loved loved loved!

This is my second book from this author and I really enjoy her work. There are times when I need a break from the dark stuff that I enjoy and just want some cookie cutter, give you diabetes type stuff and this is one of those books.

I adored this for the relatability and nostalgia. Much like my recent read Twelfth Knight, there was a lot of love given to pop culture and 90s/00s media which I was lapping up like a dog! hahaha
Eva and Saint were just the cutest and while Eva was a lovely FMC, Saint really stole my heart with his easy going attitude and how comfortable he was with himself. He helped Eva grow and it was so cute to witness. I loved how grounded her was and self assured while still having moments of vulnerability.
I liked Eva's dynamic as well and even though I knew it was part of her arc, I didnt love how dependent she was at first. All of her friends seemed to have something going for them and she kind of felt like the one that gets away with everything just because she's pretty. She was obviously against this which made her likeable but it didnt show how much of a passenger princess she was, which im not a super fan of.

I liked her friends, even Oyin by the end even though we all have or have had a hateful frenemy like her in our lives lol i did like how she turned out to have demons of her own that made her less mean. some people have to learn the hard way i guess. i despised jayden and logan haha simply because ive known Jayden and Logan's in this life who are all shameless little bastards who just need a kick haha

I loved this a lot a am happy to add this to my list of cutesie YA that i can read whenever I need a pick me up! 

I read this as it was the book chosen for my new book club and if not for that simple fact, I never would have finished it. This book was bizarre in one of the worst ways I've ever had the opportunity to witness. I'd like to just say it was bad, that it was a book I just personally didn't mesh with, so I'll move on from it, but the levels in which this book managed to shock and offend me by being published in the first place, needs to be addressed. 

 

First off, it needed development. The jumps between voice and time and dialogue were just so non sensical. There was so much promise at the start and even at points in the middle, but it just never lifts off in the way the blurb implies/promised. 

 

What I was able to get from this is that the world is currently in a post war time environment where, what appears to be Russia has taken over the world and is now known as the Allied Force. This has happened because of a meteor crashing I think and some other stuff that’s not quite clear. We’re not sure who the Allied Force are allied with or against, since it seems that they literally have control over the entire world already so who exactly are they fighting. The UK and the US are known as the Transatlantic Empire but don’t really do much in the novel or the world it seems, so not sure why this distinction is made. Anyway, the Russian Nazis rule the world and in a weird twist of things, they were actually the most interesting thing throughout as the writer seemed to have really fleshed out who they were and their motivations for world domination. How they condition their men into soldiers, how they view the world, how the main Hitler guy High General Stormbane rules was so sinister. I enjoyed reading the dynamic of he and his family, especially his sons Maximus and Vorian, but we’ll get to that. 

 

The book take place during an event called the Great Hunt in which the oppressed are forced to take part in a Hunger Games type event which is televised and everyone watching thinks isn’t real. Our main character, Coa is stressed because if she doesn’t win the game – it’s not clear how – her whole family will be killed. The massive problem with this is that Coa’s family is adopted and therefore she has no blood relation to them. This means, that despite DNA tracking being the reason as to how the AF could find her family, this wouldn’t in fact work since they have no DNA in common. In addition to this, at the very start of the book, Coa actively says she is willing to die when one of the soldiers corners her. If that’s the case, then what are the stakes and why are you fighting so hard in the Great Hunt to save your family? Its contradictory and downright stupid. At one-point shes even asked by some bad guys whether she has family and she simply says no and they just… believe her. So how are they ever in danger? 

Coa is in this position ultimately because she is in a labour camp but its never made entirely clear how she got there. She seems to have been some kind of feral child in a human zoo with no verbal communication but by the time we meet her, she’s perfectly understandable. She is also meant to have some kind of lightning magic that after being mentioned, doesn’t play any major part in the story. She mentions there being some kind of price to pay for using but this but its never paid as she uses them at two convenient points in the book and nothing happens to her because of it so why not use it to kill everyone around you? 

 

Speaking of killing people, this brings us onto the second main character/POV from a girl called Ife. Ife is ethnic, the only ethnic in the whole book it seems and she is married to the son of the Allied Forces, a perfect soldier named Maximus. Although magic is supposed to originate in Africa, the only African descendent in the book has no magic of her own. However, I will say that Maximums and Ife were the most entertaining for me as I was the most invested in their pseudo romance and the complexity of their relationship. On the one hand, she spends her time saying she is going to kill Maximus and bring down the Allied Force but its not shown how and at no point does she in fact, try to kill him. She spends most of her time saying she doesn’t care for him while showing that she does in fact care for him and sleeping with him. I guess it’s meant to show how she has to do what she must to survive but since she seems to have willing run to safety with this man and his family – which makes no sense since they’re her mortal enemies and of course is never explained – it reads hollow. She says she ran to him when she was thirteen and married him when she was fifteen. How? Why? To broker peace amongst AF and foreigners. That doesn’t seem to be happening when foreigners are still treated like shit, Ife included. 

 

The book was given an extra star however, simply for the ending in which Ife and Maximus play the biggest part. I can honestly say I didn’t see it coming in such a way. It was truly shocking and exciting and had it been more like that throughout the book/from the start, then it might have been great. The points that led up to it were so well woven into what was happening that while it came out of nowhere, you did realise that the clues had been laid beforehand. Where it was let down is that because there was so much other bullshit in and around it, you didn’t realise that these things were in fact important, and not just Ife being repetitive. 

 

Lastly, I will point out that I understood this was a book with black and brown characters but everyone was blonde haired and blue eyed. Maybe there were some lines crossed here but I was so confused by this and even more so by the image of the author themselves who I’m not sure if they’re even a real person. Im not one to scream AI from the rooftops but coupled with how this book ever got printed, it just doesn’t feel remotely like this is a real person or serious book. 

This started out a little slow for me admittedly and took a while to really get into. However by the end i was successfully sucked into the emotive YAness of it all that had me wanting to continue just to find out whether two of the characters will kiss! Lol

Saoirse is a siren living in a world where this is basically illegal. She spends her days killing people for hire to sate her lust for the kill and struggles with the fact that she isnt sorry about this in the least. That is until she meets and falls for Hayes - crown prince with the egomaniac father you know the deal - and struggles with her growing feelings for him and her thirst for murder. 
Their connection and Hayes’ sunshine to her grumpy was the most interesting part but a lot of this was overshadowed by the clumsy worldbuilding and overcomplexity. Coupled with fast pacing/easy time jumps and conclusions, it just felt odd. Not bad just…odd lol

A lot of repetition to enforce things we already know but what i did enjoy was that even though Saoirse was a bit of a bitch to everyone, her reasons and self flagellation came full circle and made me feel bad for her. By the end, her resistance to loving Hayes was super cute and i need more. 

Another decent YA outing with no spice of any kind but a fairly original story with some twists that call for me to continue despite initial resistance. A bit like a siren’s song one might say 😉

I like Alejandro and his slips into Spanish really messed me up haha but overall it was more a fxckfest then i usually enjoy for no real reason. Im aware what im reading is for the dark spice and thats great but theres a balance and i think this one went over the edge for me a little too often.