Review: "Cruel Crown" by Victoria Aveyard

~o~Rating~o~

Warning: This review contains spoilers for  the first book in the series Red Queen.

Goodreads Synopsis:

If there’s one thing Mare Barrow knows, it’s that she’s different.

Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the color of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control.

The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.

Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors.
But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat.

Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?

The electrifying next installment in the Red Queen series escalates the struggle between the growing rebel army and the blood-segregated world they’ve always known—and pits Mare against the darkness that has grown in her soul.

~o~Review~o~

After being horribly disappointed with the first book, I don’t know why I continued reading this series. Actually, I do know. I just can’t stay away from people with cool powers no matter how tiring the story is. The first book had potential so I guess I wanted this series to get better. Where did that leave me? Horribly disappointed again. I don’t understand why people are so obsessed with these books.

Most of Glass Sword was just plain boring. So many new characters were introduced but none of them were given any depth. The descriptions were heavy and there was a lot more telling than showing. Details in a book are generally good but huge information dumps are just confusing and… well, annoying. Even the action scenes seemed to drag on to the point where I would just start skipping paragraphs of unnecessary description.

And then comes my hatred for Mare. It’s not even a strong dislike anymore: I seriously hate this girl. She’s a whiny brat who thinks she is the only person in the world who understands pain. She treats all her friends like background characters, using them when needed and leaving them behind when she didn’t. She doesn’t trust anyone but expects everyone to trust her to make the “right” decisions. She just makes me angry!

Unless I’m completely out of books, I will definitely not be continuing this series.

Review: “Nearly Gone” by Elle Cosimano

~o~Rating~o~

Warning: I read this a while ago and am writing this review only now.

Goodreads Synopsis: Nearly Boswell knows how to keep secrets. Living in a DC trailer park, she knows better than to share anything that would make her a target with her classmates. Like her mother's job as an exotic dancer, her obsession with the personal ads, and especially the emotions she can taste when she brushes against someone's skin. But when a serial killer goes on a killing spree and starts attacking students, leaving cryptic ads in the newspaper that only Nearly can decipher, she confides in the one person she shouldn't trust: the new guy at school—a reformed bad boy working undercover for the police, doing surveillance. . . on her.

Nearly might be the one person who can put all the clues together, and if she doesn't figure it all out soon—she'll be next.

Another book I would not have finished if it weren’t for something school related (Reader’s Rally, anyone?). Nearly (yes, that is her name) is kind of horrible. And the paranormal aspect of the book (Nearly can taste people’s emotions when she touches them) was completely unnecessary and unrelated. This could’ve been a perfectly good mystery novel if the paranormal aspect was missing. Instead of adding to the plot, it just made it more confusing and left a lot of questions unanswered.

And not to mention her horrible people skills. She has the perfect best friend: someone who knows her, has been with her through thick and thin, steals money from his abusive father so she’ll be able to pay rent. And who does she choose? The bad boy, of-course! Doesn’t every teenage girl?

This book frustrated me.

~o~SPOILER ALERT~o~

One thing that really bothered me was her friendship with Anh. It never really seemed like a friendship. The tension is high between the two (they’re both competing for a chemistry scholarship); they barely talked let alone bonded. I didn’t understand why Nearly kept referring to her as one of her closest friends when she is always trying to avoid her. And let’s not forget that even when she CHOSE Reece over Jeremy, she would still always get jealous when Anh and Jeremy were together. Make up your mind!

Review: "Allegiant" by Veronica Roth

Allegiant is the third (and last) book to the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth

 

~o~Rating~o~

It started off pretty well but I disliked the dual narrative so much! I'm used to being in Tris' head. I don't think Veronica Roth did a very good job with Tobias' perspective. He sounded way too much like Tris.

Anyway, so they go out of the city and things just fall apart! I was expecting the cameras and the experiments and such but I don't think Roth did a very good job with everything. The Maze Runner had similar concepts and I LOVE those books.This book definitely did not meet my expectations. 

~o~SPOILER ALERT~o~

Apparently, Beatrice Prior gave her life up for a message (which was to send an army of Divergent out of the city) didn't matter! Then why in Hades did she agree to go into the experiment??

And now you're telling me that Tobias isn't Divergent! I think that was completely unnecessary!! And even is he wasn't, Tobias would NEVER act like how he was acting. He would be mad at the bureau people for thinking he was damaged and wouldn't have taken it for an explanation. And he is TOBIAS. He would NEVER go on with a plan in which he didn't know exactly what he was getting into (as was the case with him and Nita). He is not a trusting person, he's never been a trusting person, and there he is going along with a coup with someone he met three days ago. That's NOT how he acts. Does Veronica Roth not realize that she CANNOT change a character's personality to fit the plot?!?! And Uriah! Poor Uriah, who I feel so sorry for right now.

And then, after the last two books had built up to the war between the factionless and the factions, we don't even get to witness most of it. We only get some glimpses from the cameras at the bureau.

And the whole thing with genetically healed and genetically damaged just didn't fit for me. So, they had set up an experiment and monitored their genes. Okay. And they have been in that experiment for more than three decades. I don't get why in Hades someone didn't try to escape!! They said that if they tried to escape, they'll inject them with the memory serum. But if a group of them were to go out, and if that whole group was injected with the memory serum, don't you think at-least some of the residents would know something was fishy? Take the Erudite, for example; they’re naturally curious and yet, none of them tried to find out what was beyond the fence? Humans are curious and stupid creatures! They're not going to stay inside a fence for decades!

I didn't mind that Tris died. I've been waiting for AGES for a main character in one of my favorite book series' to die (I thought it would be a nice change), but the way she died just seemed horrible to me. When she was escorting Caleb to their "mission" I knew that she wasn't going to let him die for her. I mean, this is Tris! So of-course she saved Caleb and went herself, if she hadn't I would've been disappointed.

Also the whole time I was thinking. If the bureau people could really be so low as to wipe out the memories of thousands of people, why couldn't they just inject Jeanine or Evelyn or Marcus? Do you realize how many people that would be saving??
And then in the end, Tobias goes to his mother and just ASKS her to quit the war. This is EVELYN! She left her son when he was a little boy with an abusive father/husband so she could save herself. She led hundreds of people to revolt and wage war. I do think that she would stop all the nonsense for Tobias but it shouldn't have been that easy. Maybe a little more convincing in Tobias' part. And if it really was that easy, why did Tobias not talk to his mom BEFORE all this happened.

The last part with Tobias almost drinking the memory serum was UTTER NONSENSE!! Again, this is TOBIAS!! Yes, Tris' death screwed him up but he wouldn't drink the memory serum. He wouldn't want to forget Tris and everything they did together.

So, what did I like about this book?

Well, I like Christina more now and I feel really sorry for her. She lost her boyfriend in the first book in the hands of her best friend, she was getting close to Uriah who just HAD to die, and then she loses her best friend. I mean, she came from Candor to Dauntless which drove her away from her family but she found a new family among her new Dauntless friends, but now they're all gone too.

I seriously can't think of what else I liked.