MINI REVIEW: Arc of a Scythe Series by Neal Shusterman

Hey guys! I haven’t done a mini review for a while and since I recently finished the Arc of a Scythe Series by Neal Shusterman, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to bring my mini reviews back. There will be spoilers so if you haven’t yet read this series and would like to you should probably avoid reading this post. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on this series!

Scythe:

I went into this with pretty high expectations because everyone has been raving about it and I wasn’t disappointed. It definitely lives up to the hype and I can see myself reading it again in the future. It’s a pretty popular YA fantasy/dystopian series but if you haven’t heard of it, the story is set in a utopian world where there’s no disease, war or crime, which also means that everyone is immortal. In order to keep the population under control, people are randomly selected to be ‘gleaned’ (killed) by a professional scythe. Citra and Rowan are teenagers who have been chosen as an apprentice, however, whoever wins at the end of it must glean the loser as a scythe is only meant to take on one apprentice at a time. The world-building was seriously impressive and there was a great cast of characters. I thought it was interesting that scythe’s took on apprentices and I loved seeing how Scythe Faraday trained Citra and Rowan and the choices they both made throughout. Also, I liked how scythe’s could chose how they gleaned people and how ruthless they wanted to be about it.

MINI REVIEW: Shadow and Bone trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

Hey guys! I recently finished the Shadow and Bone trilogy by Leigh Bardugo and instead of reviewing each book individually, I thought it would be better to do a mini review of each book all in one post, like I did for The Young Elites trilogy by Marie Lu. Plus this series is quite old now and very popular so I think a lot of people will know what this series is about. I’m late to the Grishaverse and since the TV show was announced I thought I should finally see what the fuss is all about! Surprisingly I haven’t actually heard a lot about this trilogy other than to go into it with very slow expectations as it isn’t very good. Here’s my thoughts on each book:

Shadow and Bone: 

I thought this series started off pretty strong and I really enjoyed it. The world building was alright, if a little confusing at times, and some of the characters were interesting enough. One thing that bothered me though was the main character. I didn’t think Alina was an impressive main character and I found it so bizarre how she was easily led by others. She just didn’t seem to have a mind of her own and was always looking to others to tell her what to do. She didn’t know anything about the Darkling but she immediately took what he said as the truth. She was such a weak character and so easy to manipulate.  The Darkling, on the other hand, was a very interesting character. I was immediately drawn to him and I could tell straight away that I’d love him – probably because he was the villain. I think Leigh did a great job with his character and I was definitely looking forward to seeing more of him. I thought the ending had a nice twist and ended on an interesting cliffhanger. It was good enough to make me want to start reading the second one right away! Overall I ended up giving this four stars because I did really enjoy it but I think the world building could have been better and there was a bit of a love triangle going on but it wasn’t constantly in my face so it was bearable.

MINI REVIEW: The Young Elites trilogy by Marie Lu

Hey guys! I recently finished The Young Elites trilogy by Marie Lu and while I didn’t enjoy it enough to review each book individually, I still wanted to do a mini review of each book in one post. I’ve been wanting to write mini review posts for a while now, so I thought this trilogy would be the perfect time to do so!

The Young Elites:

I was expecting so much from this book given how much praise I’ve heard about Marie Lu and her writing. But this ended up being so disappointing and quite boring, actually. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, I just didn’t like them at all. I felt like they weren’t fully fleshed out and we were only scratching the surface with them. The only thing that interested me about this book was the main character, Adelina, being more of a villain than a hero and embracing her dark side. I read a lot of reviews on Goodreads saying the second book is a lot darker than the first, so this is what made me continue this series. I was interested in seeing that darkness and fury in Adelina.  I wanted to see her take revenge on everyone and make people afraid of her. Another thing I liked was how everyone’s power was unique, no two people could have the same power. I think Marie came up with some great powers for each of the characters. Also the ending did surprise me, I was definitely not expecting Marie to be so ruthless with her characters!