The Key was an amazing finale to the outstanding Engelsfors trilogy. The story is coming to an exciting conclusion and what a conclusion it is – almost one-thousand pages (at least in the German translation)! 

The first big surprise is already on the first of those pages:

When reading Circle, I already theorized that the chosen ones were not really dead, but in a demon dimension/world of some sort. And I was right! The book starts with Ida’s POV in a world between the living and the dead which plays a huge role throughout The Key. I was so happy that Ida and especially Elias were still there and that we got his POV again – last time was right before he died. This creates some strong emotional moments when the girls arrive there, like Elias and Linnéa meeting for a last time (this was so heart-breaking) or Ida hugging Anna-Karin and apologizing to her

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The rest of the plot is still as intriguing, kind of creepy and full of twists as before. The apocalypse is closer than ever, and the girls have to do everything they can to prevent it. Not only the girls try to prevent the apocalypse but there’s also a second circle forming around Walter that forces Minoo to join them. This new circle was uncomfortable to read about because there were so many new characters, and I just had not a good feeling about it – this feeling was probably the exact one the authors aimed at. It’s not clear who the girls can trust and who not;

for example, Walter is revealed to be an antagonist later on. He’s so evil, just like the Council. I just loved the plot around those two

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And the ending itself was absolutely amazing and epic:

Because Minoo started using her abilities more, she changes so much, and I was so afraid that she would actually turn evil. At one moment, it seemed that the other girls would need to kill Minoo but they luckily didn’t need to since she chooses the right side in the end. It is a bit open-ended as well since we don’t know how the world will change now that humans know that magic exists. The final pages were so great as well with everyone meeting where it began: at Kärrgava. It was so sad to say goodbye to everyone: the girls, Mona, Felix, Adriana, Gustaf and so many more great people

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When looking at the personal life of the girls that is still focussed on in this book, it shows realistically that not everything is well in the end:

Linnéa’s father started to drink again which was just so hard to watch, just as the death of Anna-Karin’s mother. I felt so sorry for her, she deserves better. At least her father wrote her a letter in the end

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But at least, Erik and his crew

got what they deserved. This was so satisfying, especially because it was not clear if justice would prevail. It was so terrible to see how seemingly no one believed Linnéa because she had a difficult past, something that is absolutely not her fault but the fault of her circumstances

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Coming to the characters, I have to say that I loved almost all of them. Most of them have so many facets, are so well developed and are neither totally good nor totally bad. Like I’ve mentioned before, even though the cast is quite large, every minor character plays a more or less important role. Even those minor characters are well developed that you can always remember who who is. 

I obviously love all of the main characters and their character development is so amazing. In the end, they’ve become real friends and the circle becomes a found family for them. The ships were great as well; I especially loved Linnéa x Vanessa, they’re so amazing. I also liked Minoo x Gustaf. 

All of the villains were interesting as well. With Olivia, we have a great female antagonist. I also liked

Walter as a villain. Maybe you could’ve seen it coming, but I was not expecting that

! Other characters I especially loved were Nicolas

sacrificing his life for saving the world

, Mona, and Viktor and Alexander. It was so great to see how much some of them were ready to give to stop the apocalypse. 

I just can’t believe what a gem I found with the Engelsfors series. I stumbled upon it randomly when someone was asking for weird book recommendations on Twitter. But the series is so much more than weird: It’s heart-breaking, mysterious, terrifying, creative, and so much more. I urge everyone who enjoys YA literature in the slightest to give it a try.