Rating: 5/5 stars

The sequel to POWERLESS continues Paedyn and Kai’s story.

This entire series has me hooked, and I cannot WAIT for book three. I absolutely love the characters here (especially, once again, Kai, who is so nuanced and morally grey and absolutely perfect I can’t stand it), and really enjoyed the layers to their development and relationships here. This book was very different from POWERLESS but I was still thoroughly entertained the entire time.

I did predict the ending, but I still screamed anyway, and there was a jaw dropping plot reveal towards the middle that I am still struggling to wrap my brain around (seriously, people, I need answers). I can’t recommend this series enough for YA fantasy fans!

CW: Violence/blood/death/grief; mentions of child death; torture; death of parent

This book was a bit of a let down because there is zero plot!!! There were so many more directions I expected this to go and it went in none of them. This book is a ton of back and forth between Paedyn and Kai and it got really old. I also wish we got more of Kai’s perspective because you could tell he had some character growth based on his actions, but we didn’t get to hear any internal thoughts about that change. The tension between the characters was really good at the beginning and just kind of fell apart  throughout the book without reason. I guess I saw the ending coming because we got zero hints at anything else during the story, but it still made zero sense to me and kind of made me annoyed. It feels like you could have slipped this book except for a couple of chapters and then start reading the third. I love these characters and the world but this book didn’t add a lot to either of these.

Behind spoiler reactions to ending!!

UMMM I AM NOT OK WITH THIIS ENDING KITT IS JUST LIKE HIS FATHER BUT 100 TIMES WORSE  I recommend having something to scream into or punch (maybe a little bit of both) when you get to this ending. JUST KNOW I GAVE YOU A WARNING!!!!  WILL I EVER RECOVER FROM THIS??? I GUEESS I AHVE TO WAIT UNTI,.L APRIL OF 2025 TO FIND OUT.

Other then the ending I enjoyed this book and set a new personal record for finishing a book: 2 days. I do feel like the writing was lacking in some spots (compared to powerless) however there is MANY instances where Lauren's writing is just incredible. Spoiler for how plot develops

I do understand the complains of more of a build up to Kai and Payton meeting and while I semi agree with this I did enjoy the struggles of getting back to the kingdom.

Overall, I would say if you enjoyed powerless this would be a great next read. Before this book came out I was in a reading slump after finishing powerless, this might be my last review until April.... 

Maybe it's because the first book was extremely disappointing so I was expecting to hate this book so I was surprised I didn't, bit I found that I enjoyed this book far more than Powerless. Does this book suffer from some of the same annoying things Powerless did? Yes. But it was still an improvement.

Here's what I did like:

1. There was much less use of the word 'laugh' or 'laughter' or 'huffed out a laugh' in this book. Because in Powerless I'm certain it was on almost every page with Paedyn and Kai interacting. There was still way too much use of those words (we need to get Roberts a thesaurus or something) but it was used much less this time around and I'll take whatever win I can get.

2. Also I feel like the stakes felt higher and since there weren't a ton of side characters sprinkled in, we had more time with our main characters. Which was both good and bad. Because I liked Paedyn for the most part in this book. She didn't feel bad for what she did in Powerless when she killed the king, but she also had a lot of trauma from losing those she cared about.

3. The action scenes were pretty good. I think they were well written and I liked how Paedyn wasn't constantly relying on Kai to use his magic to save her (which happened a lot in the first book).

4. The fact that this book was shorter that the first book so I didn't feel like I was walking through molasses trying to read through it. 



Now onto the nitpicky and not-nitpicky things I didn't like about this book.

1. There were a lot of things that were repeated way too many times, to the point that it felt like I was being hit over the head with it. Examples being

Pae and Kai saying "Pretend" every page, or Paedyn constantly telling Kai she couldn't kill him because he would be "deadweight." or how Kitt's chapters always had the "maybe I am going mad" and "they think I'm mad" or some variation that was supposed to make us think he might be losing it even though it was so obvious that we all kind of knew he wasn't.

2. The fact that the narrative tried to make Kai's and Paedyn's actions seem similar, particularly with how they killed each other's fathers. Paedyn killing Kai's dad was literally her killing a power-hungry king who orchestrated mass genocide of a group of people who he deemed weak because they didn't have powers, and she killed him because he was trying to kill her first! Kai killing Paedyn's dad was him killing a Healer who wasn't a classist and couldn't be bought like all the other Healers, and he did so because Kai's dad, the power-hungry king, told him too. Like Kai is a victim but trying to act like those two deaths were the same just wasn't it.

I mostly say this because of the scene where Kai tells Payden "I didn't want to! I wasn't going to! He (her dad) was asleep, but then he woke up and I panicked and stabbed him and I was so disgusted with myself I threw up afterward." Like... okay? You felt guilty for killing an innocent man... as you should. He may not have had a choice, but his situation would cause different emotions (including guilt even though the guilt wasn't really his). In contrast, Paedyn killed a guy who straight-up orchestrated mass genocide... so I don't think she needs to be feeling too bad about that.

3. Kai's weird back and forth in this book. He flirted with her, true, but he also kept being like "I have a duty" as if that would make him blameless for his decisions to bring Paedyn in to presumably be imprisoned or executed. It was weird because it felt like he wanted to push Paedyn away and act like he didn't care, but then he'd flirt with her and try to get her to admit she cared for him. And normally I wouldn't mind that but the book never seems to mention how back and forth he is. 

4. This is Kai-related, but the epilogue and how Kai acted in it.

The epilogue pissed me off and made me dislike Kai because he went on and on about how much he cared for Paedyn but he doesn't seem ready to do anything about it. He's just accepting that his brother, who he doesn't think is mentally stable at the moment, wants to marry the woman he's head over heels for. And he's just like "I'll love her from afar because the beast doesn't get the beauty boohoo I'm so sad waahhh." Like stop being emo for two seconds and try to find out what's going on instead of stepping away! Like you told Paedyn you would work together and then you just take a step back when you get some shocking news? What?!

Overall I can't say this book was great or anything. I don't even know if I'll call it good, but it wasn't as bad as the first book, so that's a win. Do I care enough to continue to the third book? Meh. Not really. But I might just to see what happens.