Asheyna

This series is good. I really love the characters, but the way the story progresses with HUGE jumps in time doesn't let you connect the same way. It feels a bit as though the story flies by you without taking a moment to really dive in. There's so much potential, but it's not as emotionally engaging as I typically like my novels. That said it's a decent read. A great look at life after the civil war.

There are some books whose endings leave you in awe of their perfection. This is one of them. The way the series ties up is just absolutely brilliant. I don't have enough words to express it.I'm only saddened that this series is not more popular.

Aaaahhh... just as fantastic as I remembered.

YUP just as good a read as it was last time. Highly recommend it for anyone looking for a quirky summer read!

Review to come

So I knew going into this that it’s a YA romance so I wasn’t expecting something really deep and philosophical. A girl likes her guilty-pleasure reads every now and again, this wedding planning lady especially. I was kind of hoping for a plot that would catch my attention and something to tug a lil at the ol’heartstrings.Nope! It wasn’t even a good no-brainer book. I felt like without the synopsis I wouldn’t have understood things at all. In truth there was a kind of sub-par fanfic feel about the whole thing. Like the author assumes you have a lot more knowledge about the world and the events than we actually do. Fanfic, or maybe an excerpt from a larger piece of work. One with some back story.Coming in at only 163 pages it is definitely short, even for YA which honestly tends to get a bit long at times. And short isn’t necessarily bad. I adore Wrinkle in Time and it’s pretty short, although even that book is about 40 pages more than this one. Wright could have done a lot with those additional pages, and she probably should have.Instead of experiencing any emotional investment, or even shock/horror at some of the events of The Big Climax I just kind of passively went through it. Perhaps it’s pacing, the beginning really dragged for me, probably because I had no clue wtf even happened. True story, I thought Aern was a chick for the first.. I dunno 40 pages or so? (Yes I know the cover is a girl and boy but anyway). That kind of sums up the whole book actually. You’re not ever given enough information to really truly know what’s going on.The entire book they talk about Commonbloods, which is fairly easy to figure out are plain old Muggles. But then there’s this other group. Except, what are they? Not vampires far as I can tell… although there’s a lot of similarities. There’s some kind of inconsistent rules about how they can heal, and this thing about a prophet and a Council. But honestly… I don’t know. And then there’s this whole thing about Others I think, which are some kind of Elder/Ancients type deal who we can manage to backhandedly figure out were a whole lot more powerful than the ones we currently have, whatever they are.Overall I think it lacks the polish that a finished book should have. It’s like an early draft where the author was just trying to get it all written down before she forget and meant to go add in details later, and then just decided to publish it as-is. On a hunch I went and confirmed the publisher, Createspace. Sadly this book is every stereotypical bad thing that readers and authors have to say about self publishing, bad grammar and spelling mistakes included.The verdict? While it’s not offensive in any way (which is an accomplishment for YA fic let me tell you!), and thus not deserving of the 1-star hate-rate… it’s honestly only about a 1.5.Give it a pass.

Review to follow.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I wanted to love this book. I adored the first... I dunno quarter? Basically up until they introduced the Max character. Him and his stalker, abusive, why don't you want me the way I want you I deserve it, attitude made me fly through the last half of the book. Not because I was enjoying it, and only a very small part because I was engrossed in the plot, because mostly I had to know how all that turned out to know whether to just be mildly frustrated, or out and out vomit.End result? A bit of both. There was a lot in this book I saw coming. And a lot of potential for an excellent dystopian world. But the character Max just shredded it for me. Completely ruined the book.There are SO many things that are Not. Ok. And so much of this book is everything that's wrong with YA lit.I'll read the other two books in the series cuz I'm part of a blog-hop to do so. But there's very little chance of my enjoying them at all.

A decent book overall, review to come.

This one was far less focused on romance and more on the community of the Amish. I loved it even more for that reason. There was a thread of peace through the whole novel that I really enjoyed.

It was really nice to read a romance novel where the driving conflict wasn't a series of massive miscommunications between the two main characters. Instead they wrestled with other issues. Refreshing!It's become a pet peeve of mine when all the conflict to the story can be resolved simply by one honest conversation. That's not conflict, that's ANNOYING

A nice, easy, predictable romance... not to be underrated. There's something to be said for a book that doesn't completely shred your insides. Again this book suffers from the whole "miscommunication as a plot device" ailment that seems to be affecting romance authors everywhere. Fortunately there's more to it than that. We don't doubt through the book that they love each other, there's just stuff in the way. As stuff tends to do. The story of God's grace and forgiveness is beautifully woven in between the love story and the book left me feeling at peace. A great little read.

I'm not sure I've ever been so frustrated by a book EVER. What might have redeemed it was if this book was actually the end to the series. Instead we get anger, confusion, and hurt in droves and essentially no resolution whatsoever.And I was mostly ok with it, thinking that at least the ending would be sweet, something that didn't make me want to slit my wrists while waiting for the next book. Instead we get Maxon heading off to a date with Kriss essentially as a super vengeful way of hurting America.Overall I finish this book feeling incredibly grumpy and cheesed off. The odds of her not winding up with Maxon are slim, I think there's be a massive riot of insanely angry fans if she doesn't. But this process has gone on FAR too long already. And the amount of miscommunication leading to conflict was infuriating.I'm well over authors using character's refusal to have honest conversations as a way to drive a romance plot. To those of us over the age of thirteen it's annoying, and even more than that it's aggravating. Get. Over. It. Find another source of conflict to drive your book, PLEASE I beg of you. And it's not like Cass didn't give herself a lot to work with.There's the king, the conflict with the rebels, the whole library room thing so much ELSE I want to know about more than America and Maxon being idiots. It's a fine line to walk between teasing us, the reader, with what the author KNOWS we want, and going over it into throw the book against the wall land. A limit on how many times they can AAAAAAALMOST finally make it work when it ALL GOES TO HELL. This book exceeds that limit on an EPIC scale. And the problem with that is it makes me read the last quarter of the book stupid fast just praying for it please to be over.

The first two books in this series felt like the author was stretching her legs, getting to know the characters and putting them through their paces. This third book is where it all comes home. I totally enjoyed it.

So, I started this book at around 10PM when I went to bed. I finished this book around 12:30AM when I actually went to sleep. That probably tells you how much I enjoyed it.What a refreshing book! The plot was cute, the main character was well-written, realistic and interesting. And the romance was adorable.I LOVED Maxon. What a great guy!! He was so understanding of the weirdness of the situation, but he didn't let America walk all over him either. The relationship between the two of them was absolutely adorable. The whole Aspen thing bothered me to no end, but I like that she finally told him where to go (although I could have done with a bit more fire there).The one thing that bugged me is that the end did NOT feel like an ending. I NEED MORE!Second Read: Given some of the negative reviews about this one I wondered if I might not like it as much the second time through. Whether the things that irked other people would get to me as well. It didn't. I loved it and I can't WAIT to read book 2.

A very cute little book. Pretty predictable but Minime absolutely devoured it! The first full-sized novel she ever read and I can see why it hooked her. It has all the elements to make kids love it.