Hey. Genitalia mutilation and misogyny are knocking. In a YA romance? Yeah, I don't know what the fuck to think either.

We've hit middle book slump again, which is fine, I feel like every book from around this time had that problem with figuring out what the middle book was going to be. I just guess I expected them to do some lower building here or maybe establish more of the cast, but they don't.

So this book series decided book two should be a short story collection. That's what I'm going to call it because it's a bunch of small stories intertwined with each other and it reminds me of like when a show is on its last season and it brings in cameo characters to resolve their conflict and sort of have all these little moments that go "yeah, look, we didn't forget about this character". But this is literary book two. Book: the second. The second book. Book number two. You can't do that to me on the second book right after the first one.

There is this plot where Anna gets told that she's a very special girl and has a special prophecy. As if the first book didn't emphasize that she was special enough. I don't know, I really felt force fed this. It might be that the first book did absolutely nothing with this besides imply that it existed, and now this one is telling me I have to believe. You can't make me believe in this, book.

The contradiction that is in this sentence is not lost upon me. Despite being a bunch of short stories with little tiny plots and all those little character moments, there is no subplot in this book, and there is almost no character development outside of the main two characters. I don't know how Wendy managed to do both.

At several points they have to turn off their super hearing because otherwise they will hear their parents having sex. Or each other having sex. And while I don't understand why this is an issue because one of them is literary of being of lust, and the others are used to this sexual stuff. Apparently parent sex is awkward and weird to them. Even though they've been hearing other people having sex for a long long time. I don't know, it just seemed like a way to involve the parents having sex being a plot point, but they've been having so many times of hearing everyone have sex in their lifetime that to turn it off just cuz their parent is having sex feels weird.
They could have said that the parents will hurt them if they find out they've been eavesdropping, that would have made it more logical.

Female genitalia mutilation is introduced...

We have this bitter angry woman character who has genitalia mutilation and is implied to have been raped a bunch and this is talking about hatred in the Middle East. Gee I can't imagine what this is about. I almost forgot about this, even though I read it and experienced it, it just escaped my mind like it did not want to be there. And honestly, I didn't want to be there either. So we've got commentary about the Middle East and genital mutilation in a young adult romance book. I... My brain threw out everything it had.

Um.

Well.

There's racism, nothing surprising there. The above is telling you it's coming. The ""new love interest"". New is subjective because he was in the last book but there was absolutely no chemistry. But in this book he begins chemistry and becomes a rival. For no reason other than we need him to suddenly climb those ranks because become arrival. Also he's the only African American person in this book(I think there's one more). And he's an angry raffle African-American with double sins on him. Religiously I know exactly what this is going for because the color of the skin represents the amount of sin according to the churches that I've been to as a kid. So I see exactly where they're going with this character and I don't like it.

And then to top it all off, he starts talking about how he wants to help the people back home who have an AIDS epidemic. Which feels like it's just another jab at him being African-American. Ew. Aaaaand it's never mentioned again.

1 star.

Gross. Honestly it says something when the first book is better than the second book and both of them are absolute rubbish that shouldn't be out there for kids to read. ( )

Kaidan=Swoon worthy.
That's all❤ ( )

CRIES ( )

I have heard mixed reviews on this series and have put off reading it for so long. I have all of the books though and decided to give it a go. I went into this with very low expectations, but ended up enjoying it more than I was expecting.
Book two was a little slow in the beginning and picked up towards the end. There is a lot of build up in this book around the story as an “army” is being formed.

I really love when all of the characters are together. They have a fun dynamic. The reason I really enjoyed this so far, is the relationship between Anna and Kaiden. I am so glad we get to see a little more between the two this time.

Overall, I did enjoy this more than I was expecting and plan to continue the series. ( )

AMAZING! I love how Anna and Kaidan's relationship changed along the book. Also, I definitely ADORE KAIDAN ROWE. :) Ready to read the third book. ( )