emilyburdick's Reviews (389)

This was a cute, easy to get through, definitely corny, take on Cinderella. I listened to it on audiobook and at first I wasn’t a fan of the back and forth perspective, but I got used to it after awhile and it was definitely necessary for this story’s success. I loved the incorporation of different fandoms in this book and it felt like a story written for the crazy fangirl in me. I love Cinderella retellings where one of the step sisters is more understanding to Cinderella/Ella’s struggles and I adored the relationship that Cal ended up in by the end of this book. All in all, I really enjoyed this story!

It took me several tries reading this book and finally trying the audiobook to get into it. I think the first book jumped headfirst into the action and was pretty action packed all throughout which made it easier for me to read through. I enjoyed this as an audiobook. I was pleasantly surprised with the ending and I would say in the last ten chapters was where this book started to amp up and grab my attention. I felt like Shahrzad’s developing her magic could have started in book one so we would get to see more of that. I also would have liked to know more about the book her father was so obsessed with. I really liked getting to know Shahrzad’s sister in this story and found myself devoted to Irsa’s romance even though it was short lived in the store, I could tell it had been developing outside of the pages of this book. Overall, I enjoyed this ending to Shahrzad and Khalid’s story!

I wanted to love this book. I always want to love the books I read but sometimes I just can’t. This was one of those times. This book was so one dimensional and lacked so much explanation. I felt like I was thrust into a world and given no explanation to why it was like this, or how it got to be this way and was just expected to accept it. The characters lacked development. Like if Cassia never found out she could be matched with Ky, I feel like she just would have accepted her place and match with Xander and her life would have carried on. I don’t like to compare books but in other dystopian books I’ve read at least the main character already has a distaste for the way the government runs things and how society functions. This girls only motive was “well I like this guy better than my true match so now I have to take down the government” ? And the love triangle was so anticlimactic. The two boys involved were so flat and their only difference was one was an accepted member of society and one was not. There was no good guy vs bad boy or anything that make me think Cassia would be better off with one rather than the other. There was no fight for her heart, no confusion of who to choose. It was like she hung out with Ky one time and boom she was in love. And when she tells her actual match this, Xander’s like kinda upset for a microsecond but then he’s fine. This just feels like a poorly done version of a few different dystopians I’ve read mashed together with some special pills thrown in.

I did look through reviews of book 2 and they look a bit more promising so I do plan to read that, but probably not anytime soon.

*Spoiler no specific details but i do kind of touch on how the book ended*


I came across this book on my audiobook app and since I watched (and LOVED) the short lived tv show based on this book, I thought the book would be equally as good. Unfortunately I did enjoy the show better and I am still sad it was cancelled. I will say that reading this book while we are in the middle of our own pandemic situation was really interesting because there were so many parallels between this book and our current situation. And although you always want a book to end on a happy note, I think this story was true to itself in ending on an unsure one. Not knowing whether the world would ever be the same was realistic and (currently) relatable. I did enjoy the way Patterson wrote very minor characters into the story from other ends of the world to show their experiences with the hostile animals. And I loved the chapters written from the animals perspective, I thought that was really well done. This would probably be 2/5 stars if I didn’t love the tv show adaptation and if I couldn’t relate to the book like I can right now due to the goings on in the world today.