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inkandplasma
Full review available on my blog on 9th September 2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/09/09/the-second-rebel/
Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the review copy of this book, it has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: violence, torture and experimentation on humanoid characters (mostly off-page), death, sexual abuse (off-page), blackmail, oppression, sex (off-page), corruption, domestic and child abuse (off-page), viral warfare, suicide.
It actually took me a while to get to reading The Second Rebel, which was partly because I was so, so nervous about this book. I adored The First Sister so much, and I was really worried that The Second Rebel wouldn’t hold up. Especially after my reread of The First Sister reminded me how much I loved the first entry in this series. I should have had more faith in Linden A. Lewis, who will never disappoint, just emotionally scar me.
Our main three from the first book; First Sister (Astrid), Lito and Hiro (who only had flashbacks in book one) are back in this book, with Hiro getting their own chapters this time around, and their stories are still hopelessly, heartbreakingly entwined. We also get to see more from Luce, Lito’s sister and possibly my favourite character in this book. I adored her chapters, even if her character arc was as devastating as all the others.
Astrid’s ‘Ringer’ revelation was one of my favourite moments in The First Sister and I really liked the way that continued to develop throughout The Second Rebel now that we and Astrid knew the truth. It made for a really interesting insight into her mental health and the way that she was coping with the trauma she’d experienced.
Finally hearing Hiro’s narrative voice was fantastic, and I really enjoyed their chapters. They started to unveil some information about the mysterious synthetics, and I’m so interested in where that’s going to go in the third book.
The ending of this book absolutely wrecked me. It was brutal, I’m not going to lie. I can’t talk about any of it, because it’s all entrenched in spoilers but there were three distinct scenes that absolutely destroyed me throughout this book, and I had to pick up something fun and happy immediately afterwards to make myself feel better. It was too devastating. I couldn’t have predicted the way that this book would unfold, and now I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen in the third book. I do know that it’s probably going to actually make me cry.
Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the review copy of this book, it has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: violence, torture and experimentation on humanoid characters (mostly off-page), death, sexual abuse (off-page), blackmail, oppression, sex (off-page), corruption, domestic and child abuse (off-page), viral warfare, suicide.
It actually took me a while to get to reading The Second Rebel, which was partly because I was so, so nervous about this book. I adored The First Sister so much, and I was really worried that The Second Rebel wouldn’t hold up. Especially after my reread of The First Sister reminded me how much I loved the first entry in this series. I should have had more faith in Linden A. Lewis, who will never disappoint, just emotionally scar me.
Our main three from the first book; First Sister (Astrid), Lito and Hiro (who only had flashbacks in book one) are back in this book, with Hiro getting their own chapters this time around, and their stories are still hopelessly, heartbreakingly entwined. We also get to see more from Luce, Lito’s sister and possibly my favourite character in this book. I adored her chapters, even if her character arc was as devastating as all the others.
Astrid’s ‘Ringer’ revelation was one of my favourite moments in The First Sister and I really liked the way that continued to develop throughout The Second Rebel now that we and Astrid knew the truth. It made for a really interesting insight into her mental health and the way that she was coping with the trauma she’d experienced.
Finally hearing Hiro’s narrative voice was fantastic, and I really enjoyed their chapters. They started to unveil some information about the mysterious synthetics, and I’m so interested in where that’s going to go in the third book.
The ending of this book absolutely wrecked me. It was brutal, I’m not going to lie. I can’t talk about any of it, because it’s all entrenched in spoilers but there were three distinct scenes that absolutely destroyed me throughout this book, and I had to pick up something fun and happy immediately afterwards to make myself feel better. It was too devastating. I couldn’t have predicted the way that this book would unfold, and now I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen in the third book. I do know that it’s probably going to actually make me cry.
Thanks to Hot Key Books for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: discussions of forced prostitution, oppression, sexism, transphobia, abuse, violence against women, violence.
This review may include spoilers for book 1 in this series, The Good Luck Girls.
The Sisters of Reckoning is the sequel to THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS, an LGBT+ dystopia about a group of girls who escaped the ‘welcome house’ that they’d been sold to as children – a brothel that brands the girls as children with a mark that cannot be hidden. In the first book, they are forced to flee after Clementine accidentally murders the man who visits on her first night as a sundown girl. The Sisters of Reckoning continues on from the end of The Good Luck Girls, where Clementine and the rest of the group have found freedom in neighbouring Ferron, while Aster has remained behind to help more girls escape Arketta one at a time.
I really liked the way that this book built on the first one. In The Good Luck Girls we see a small group in desperate straits, fighting any way that they can for their personal freedom, whereas in The Sisters of Reckoning, they’re taking on systemic issues in Arketta on a huge scale. This isn’t your standard YA overthrow-the-system story. Charlotte Nicole Davis allows her characters to be dark and traumatised and lets them wreak the revenge they deserve. They make choices that are hard, that are awful in some cases, but that they have to make for any change to take place. That doesn’t mean these girls aren’t fiercely moralistic, they are doing the right thing at every opportunity, but the right thing isn’t always the easy thing or the good thing.
One of my favourite facets to this book was Aster’s struggle with her PTSD and sexuality. She’s still suffering PTSD from her time in the welcome house, and on top of that she’s trying to come to terms with her attraction to men and women and how she feels about it. I really loved the way that Charlotte Nicole Davis handled this, and how Aster had to process her attraction alongside her trauma as well as separating it – Aster definitely isn’t the only woman who fears that her same-sex attraction could be caused by her trauma, and this book handles it sensitively.
I really enjoyed the way that this book ended. Without getting into spoiler territory, we got to see the interpersonal conflict which was far more important for our characters than the large scale ‘rebellion’ type scenes I’m used to from YA, and it left me feeling satisfied with this duology as a whole. While I wouldn’t mind reading more from this world, I also can’t wait to see what Charlotte Nicole Davis comes out with next.
Content Warnings: discussions of forced prostitution, oppression, sexism, transphobia, abuse, violence against women, violence.
This review may include spoilers for book 1 in this series, The Good Luck Girls.
The Sisters of Reckoning is the sequel to THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS, an LGBT+ dystopia about a group of girls who escaped the ‘welcome house’ that they’d been sold to as children – a brothel that brands the girls as children with a mark that cannot be hidden. In the first book, they are forced to flee after Clementine accidentally murders the man who visits on her first night as a sundown girl. The Sisters of Reckoning continues on from the end of The Good Luck Girls, where Clementine and the rest of the group have found freedom in neighbouring Ferron, while Aster has remained behind to help more girls escape Arketta one at a time.
I really liked the way that this book built on the first one. In The Good Luck Girls we see a small group in desperate straits, fighting any way that they can for their personal freedom, whereas in The Sisters of Reckoning, they’re taking on systemic issues in Arketta on a huge scale. This isn’t your standard YA overthrow-the-system story. Charlotte Nicole Davis allows her characters to be dark and traumatised and lets them wreak the revenge they deserve. They make choices that are hard, that are awful in some cases, but that they have to make for any change to take place. That doesn’t mean these girls aren’t fiercely moralistic, they are doing the right thing at every opportunity, but the right thing isn’t always the easy thing or the good thing.
One of my favourite facets to this book was Aster’s struggle with her PTSD and sexuality. She’s still suffering PTSD from her time in the welcome house, and on top of that she’s trying to come to terms with her attraction to men and women and how she feels about it. I really loved the way that Charlotte Nicole Davis handled this, and how Aster had to process her attraction alongside her trauma as well as separating it – Aster definitely isn’t the only woman who fears that her same-sex attraction could be caused by her trauma, and this book handles it sensitively.
I really enjoyed the way that this book ended. Without getting into spoiler territory, we got to see the interpersonal conflict which was far more important for our characters than the large scale ‘rebellion’ type scenes I’m used to from YA, and it left me feeling satisfied with this duology as a whole. While I wouldn’t mind reading more from this world, I also can’t wait to see what Charlotte Nicole Davis comes out with next.
