Book Review- In the Afterlight

Title- In the Afterlight
Author- Alexandra Bracken
Pages- 535
Rating-  3.3 out of 5
Companion/Sequel/Other- Third and final book!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ONLY READ IF YOU’VE FINISHED THIS BOOK!

If you saw my review for Never Fade, then you would know I really enjoyed (almost)everything about that book, except for Ruby. The same goes for this book, except now you can add Ruby and Cole to the mix. I’ll start off with what I didn’t liked about this book.

Ruby and Cole- I can’t explain to you how much these two frustrated me in this story. Now i can’t deny that these two work well together, but that’s because they’re so similar. To me that was a bad thing. They both want the same thing, to free the camps, but they wanted to go about it by fighting and killing, which, yes, there was obviously going to be a lot of that, but they wouldn’t even listen to anyone else’s ideas. They just shut down anyone’s plan. Also, these two had so many secrets from everyone, it pissed me off. Every other word from them was “you can’t tell anyone”, “no one else can know” “this stays between us”. Damn, it frustrated me to know end.

What pissed me off the most, was the way Ruby and Cole treated Liam. Talking down to him, treating him like he’s useless, like he can’t fight, or help. He freaking escaped from a camp, survived on the run, and took care of Chubs and Zu. Now, what? He can’t do anything? I don’t think so!

COMMUNICATION- Oh my god! This is what made me want to throw this book across my room. Except, I was reading on my ereader, and I couldn’t do that, but I was tempted. As I said before, so many secrets were kept from one another. If they just talked to each other, told each other the truth, so much could have been avoided!

Moving on to what I liked about this book:

Plot- I really liked where this story started off, and was heading. As with the rest of these books, this one had a lot of surprises. I enjoyed seeing them finally work out a plan to free the kids from the camps and expose the truth. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it must be to wrap up a series, but I felt this one did a decent job. I didn’t even see the big twist coming: Clancy was controlling Ruby! What the actual hell?

Characters- As always, I loved the characters. I said it before, and I’ll say it again. These characters are fun, strong, badass, and real. I loved seeing all these characters that we know and love come together and work towards a common goal. People who you’d think wouldn’t work well together, surprisingly did. Also SUZUME was back! YESSSSS!

Ruby and Liam- Now as frustrated as Ruby was, I do have to say, I really loved her when she was with Liam. I adored all the Ruby and Liam scenes. These two, for all the flaws, are perfect for one another.

Chubs and Vida- This was just EVERYTHING! I have nothing else to say but that!

Cole’s death- I don’t know how I feel about it. To be honest, I didn’t really like Cole that much. I mean, I didn’t hate him, but I also didn’t care much for him and I think most of that had to do with the way he treated Liam. I did feel sad about his death though, mainly because of Liam. I mean, Liam had just found out about Cole being a Red. I really thought they were on there way to fixing there relationship, but then he dies? Are you kidding me? I would’ve loved to have watched Liam and Cole get there relationship back. I could’ve seen myself growing to really like Cole.

So those are my thoughts on In the Afterlight by Alexandra Bracken. Let me know what you thought about the conclusion below!

Book Review- The Darkest Minds

Title- The Darkest Minds
Author- Alexandra Bracken
Pages- 488
Rating-  4 out of 5
Companion/Sequel/Other- Book 1

Okay so this is the last book that I read in 2015, and I’m happy to say that it was a good one! I tried reading this book about two years ago and I just couldn’t finish it. Here we are two later, and not only did I give it another go and finished it, I ended up really enjoying it. I don’t know what it was this time, but I passed the part where I stopped the first time, and I honestly couldn’t remember why I didn’t finish it before.

I really did enjoy the idea of this story- the camps, the different colors and powers. However, and this is what made me give it a four stars. Even though they talked about the powers, I honestly didn’t feel like they gave us enough explanation about them. By the end of this book, I still didn’t know much about the powers. I mean we got the basics, but that was really it. I just wanted more from that.

I absolutely adored the characters- Ruby, Liam, Chubs, and Zu. Seriously, they work so well together and are just an all around great team. I couldn’t wait to find out more about these characters, especially Ruby.

Ruby’s story, even though it took awhile to get to it, was heartbreaking. I felt so bad for what happened to her as a kid, and it really makes you see how strong her powers are. I want to say that even though I can see why people say that she can be an unlikable character, I personally loved her. I thought she was fun, strong, and sweet. However, that’s not to say that she’s not flawed because she definitely is.

This book was crazy and it felt like these kids were being chased by EVERYONE! The PSFs agents, skip tracers,bounty hunters, the League. Pretty much everyone and anyone were after them. Especially Ruby and Liam, for what Ruby was, and for what Liam did. Liam was worth a lot of money to people!

I want to talk about the romance for a second. I noticed that a lot of people seem to love or dislike the romance. Me? I’m on the love side. I absolutely adore Liam and Ruby and definitely think they make a great couple. You can see the connection from the beginning, and it definitely took some time to develop but I loved it. Liam is absolutely amazing and one of my favorite lines from this book came from him:

“Give me one reason why we can’t be together, and I’ll give you a hundred why we can.”

Last but not least, the ending. Oh god, the last few chapters were extremely heartbreaking and it left us on such a cliffhanger. I can’t wait to find out what the heck will happen next.