Review: The Winner’s Crime by Marie Rutkoski

Published March 3, 2015 | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
GOODREADS | THE BOOK DEPOSITORY | AMAZON

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE WINNER’S CURSE.

Following your heart can be a crime

A royal wedding means one celebration after another: balls, fireworks, and revelry until dawn. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making. As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement: that she agreed to marry the crown prince in exchange for Arin’s freedom. But can Kestrel trust Arin? Can she even trust herself?

Kestrel is becoming very good at deception. she’s working as a spy in the court. If caught, she’ll be exposed as a traitor to her country. Yet she can’t help searching for a way to change her ruthless world…and she is close to uncovering a shocking secret.

This dazzling follow-up to The Winner’s Curse reveals the high price of dangerous lies and untrustworthy alliances. The truth will come out, and when it does, Kestrel and Arin will learn just how much their crimes will cost them.

Rating: ★★★★★

I would like to say this book had too much romance, but then I’d be a hypocrite because I enjoyed everything between Kestrel and Arin so, so much. Even if many moments threatened to shatter my heart. And if you thought the schemes and trickery in The Winner’s Curse had been intense, the entire plot of this sequel will blow your mind to Mars.

At the end of the first book, we weren’t really left with an antagonist as Valoria was generally seen as this huge impending force of doom, Kestrel’s father was still someone she loved and his actions had (mostly) good intentions, Irex had been outsmarted by Kestrel (then died), and Cheat wound up dead. But fear not because you will soon meet the emperor of Valoria, a conniving prick and all-time pain in the ass. His despicable nature, in my opinion, can definitely hold a torch up to the King of Adarlan from the Throne of Glass series.

Review: I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Published February 3, 2015 · Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
GOODREADS · THE BOOK DEPOSITORY · AMAZON

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.

Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

Rating: ★★★★

The setting of I’ll Meet You There couldn’t be any more different from my life. Living in a town so small it could barely be called one is worlds apart from life in a metropolitan city and truth be told, I was a little concerned about whether I could picture everything well in my head. I discovered later it had all been needless worrying because Heather Demetrios flawlessly transported me to the hot and lazy town of Creek View.

Despite reading numerous reviews lauding I’ll Meet You There, I was still surprised by how much I had enjoyed it. Somehow, Skylar and Josh’s story was so full of life and wonder despite the sleepy and seemingly lifeless setting; not what I had expected.

“It was like the whole town was swimming in failure, but no one realized they were drowning.”
– p17

Review: This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Published December 23, 2014 · Disney-Hyperion
GOODREADS · THE BOOK DEPOSITORY · AMAZON

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THESE BROKEN STARS.

The second installment in the epic Starbound trilogy introduces a new pair of star-crossed lovers on two sides of a bloody war.

Jubilee Chase and Flynn Cormac should never have met.

Lee is captain of the forces sent to Avon to crush the terraformed planet’s rebellious colonists, but she has her own reasons for hating the insurgents.

Rebellion is in Flynn’s blood. Terraforming corporations make their fortune by recruiting colonists to make the inhospitable planets livable, with the promise of a better life for their children. But they never fulfilled their promise on Avon, and decades later, Flynn is leading the rebellion.

Desperate for any advantage in a bloody and unrelentingly war, Flynn does the only thing that makes sense when he and Lee cross paths: he returns to base with her as prisoner. But as his fellow rebels prepare to execute this tough-talking girl with nerves of steel, Flynn makes another choice that will change him forever. He and Lee escape the rebel base together, caught between two sides of a senseless war.

Rating: ★★★★

This Shattered World was a pretty spectacular novel and despite being quite a bit different from These Broken Stars (apart from the star-crossed lovers aspect), it was just as exciting. Both protagonists had such distinct personalities and you could really tell the authors knew their characters well. Very well.