Catalina Pedraza

I did tell you that there would be some unpopular opinions, didn't I?

As always, this won't be a proper review if I didn't spoil everything, so you're warned. (I know you can actually hide the entire review because of spoilers, but really, who are we kidding...)

I did not like this book as much as I wanted to. This is not a drill. I didn't and until I re-read this and find some new elements that make me change my mind, it is going to stay that way.

I do feel kinda bad, ya know? EVERYBODY, and I mean EVERYBODY loves this book with the raging heat of a thousand suns. And I don't. I'm not sure why, but I'll try and explain.

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly.

I liked the characters, and you can see that from my updates on the reading, I'm not gonna lie. The characters wpere very well written, it wasn't difficult to connect with all of them. I liked even more the different interactions with each other; I specially liked Nina and Matthias' relationship.

I loved the worldbuilding that went into this, you can sense the love and dedication the author put into creating this, it all felt real and meticulous.

Now that we put that out of the way, onto the bad.

Damn me and not taking notes.

First of all, I was a little thrown by the multiple perspective, admittedly I got around it, but still recall my first reaction to it, pure unadulterated sloth, I couldn't care less for Nina's perspective the first time, and then there was another new perspective and another, and another. It didn't end, but then, why wasn't there one for the mysterious “fugitive with a privileged past”, I get it was a decision for dramatic effect, but why not one afterwards, when we already knew who he was. I can only imagine it is some device concerning the next book.Then there's the fact that I didn't like Inej and Kaz romance completely, I did of course, but for some reason I wasn't satisfied, It felt rushed somehow, like all of the sudden this character was acting very out of character. (If that's even possible, I mean this is canon after all).

I don't know how you go from “there was something so satisfying about the little furrow between her black brows” to “he was twisted, crooked, wrong but not so broken that he couldn't pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her” in just two weeks. We get it, before all this he had a little crush on her, now he's in love. We have THREE POVs of him before he says the latter statement, the feelings development literally is: he likes furrow in black brows, very upset about wound, too shy to speak to her, she gave me space in a place with seemingly no space, and undying love, I'm not kidding, I went through all his POVs in which something about her is mentioned.
It was rushed. And if you subtract all the flashbacks you'll notice.

I loved Matthias and Nina's relationship, basically because it was a good ol' hate to love (and a bit love to hate?) dynamics, my problem? We arrived at the middle of it. I love me ‘denial, anger, bargain, acceptance' when it comes to this kind of character development, we just couldn't experience it with the characters, instead we had to see it in awfully short flashbacks. THERE WASN'T ENOUGH WYLAN AND JESPER.

* The whole book felt a little like this.

*The final twist was just not impressive. I was just like, Hey this is the guy that's got an indenture that can walk through walls and could've killed that one important ambassador. Kaz even said it: “so that's the way they did it” and they don't suspect despite him being shady af.

And the Ugly.

Just everything about Inej's kidnapping. I'm not going to lie and say that I suspected every turn of events, but this was just a thing that I had thought about (when she couldn't get past that security clearance before the party) and dismissed because, no, surely Bardugo won't leave her here so that she becomes the hero's motivation, that is one plot device I hate.

So there you have it, boys, girls, inbetweeners.