Many thanks to Claire for the advanced copy of her book! Some spoilers lie ahead.
I want to preface this by saying I really liked the book! I’ll talk more about that at the end.
I’m a huge fan of this series and of Claire. These books are typically a 10/10 no notes read for me. This one started out pretty rough, and it had me worried.
The beginning felt pointless. I couldn’t feel the drama I was supposed to be feeling. A lot of the writing felt forced, like it was trying too hard to describe the situation or fit the voice of the characters. The stakes were supposed to be high, but I didn’t feel them for quite some time. It kind of felt like nothing was happening, and it was confusing.
Normally I wouldn’t mention typos in an advanced copy. This is not a final proof, so to mention them would be unfair. But I have never seen this many typos in an advanced copy before. That would be absolutely fine, but what concerns me is that the beginning of this book felt so unusually bland and even confusingly disorganized at times. It’s also longer than all the other books in the series (sometimes what feels like unnecessarily). Considering all that as well as the fact that this is the second book Claire published this year, I worry that she rushed through this one. Again, typos are nothing to criticize in advanced copies, but I fear they were possibly an indicator of why some of the rest of this book felt off.
(SPOILERS HERE) Something that’s bothered me for quite some time with this series is that in the first book, Shiloh mentions being sexually molested by her father once, which is obviously extremely traumatizing. He’s also physically abusive, and would beat her and her family frequently. But this never comes up again, save one time when it’s implied that this happened and then doesn’t really affect much else in the story. Through four books now, it’s basically forgotten that her bodily autonomy was taken away from her by her dad, the person who’s supposed to take care of her. I just don’t understand it in the slightest. That should be a big deal, but it felt like a throwaway detail in Shiloh’s story to make her situation feel even more tragic.
(Soft spoilers for the next two paragraphs—no specific plot details revealed.)
Another thing about Shiloh that I’m just not buying is how she figured out Jonah’s situation with the orb. The foreshadowing was STRONG but not in a good way. Maybe that’s the dramatic irony talking as I the audience already knew what happened to Jonah, but the tiny details Shiloh was noticing didn’t feel real. With all due respect, she’s not that clever, I don’t think.
And speaking of Jonah. Oh man. The foolery situation. I’m no hater of taking inspiration and borrowing ideas, not in the slightest. But this one was too hard to ignore. The Jonah subplot is literally the plot of Mockingjay. To the point where I could name the specific scenes that were being paralleled in Mockingjay. The specific DIALOGUE even. It was tough to read. The only thing that saved it was getting into Jonah’s point of view during that subplot. Getting his take was original and made all the other perspectives more bearable. By the end, I could stomach it, but wow.
All right, now for my praise, because while this is the weakest book in the series, I’d still recommend it like crazy!
This book was a RIDE. So much of it was wild and unexpected. Sometimes I would predict things happening and my expectations would be totally thrown. The character development was so sweet and powerful. I feel like this plot was less clean than that of the other books so far. So much happens, but that wasn’t a bad thing. It was still so enjoyable and riveting, and once I got past about a hundred pages I couldn’t put it down.
It took its time to get there, but Claire fell into her stride, and I’m excited for the conclusion of this series.
(PG-13 rating)
Grades 9-12