Author: Joelle Charbonneau
Pages: 303
Genre: YA Fantasy
Series: Dividing Eden #2
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780062844972
Here you can read my review of Dividing Eden!
“The Kingdom of Eden is growing darker with each passing day. Brother and sister, former foes, must decide whether some betrayals cut too deep to be forgiven—and whether one will wear the crown or both will lose everything.”
Goodreads Synopsis
Story:
So we start where we left off in the last book, which I’m going to try and not talk about because of spoilers. But let’s just say that everything from government to relationships is a huge mess. But still not as big of a mess as how the story is being told in this sequel. There was a lot to solve and unravel, and I would have loved three books instead of two. That way I, and the author, might have had time to really think about what’s going on. Everything was going way too quickly for the story to feel fully evolved and finished. And things does not really add up at all to me. For example; All the people in the kingdom seems to be blind, deaf and mute because nobody reports anything about what’s happening outside the walls. The theory that the state of the kingdom could be hushed up by the council could have worked, if not for the fact that regular people come and go trough the city. And our main siblings of the story spends a lot of time with people that are not highborn or employed directly by the crown. They should have heard some rumours!
Characters:
Carys is even more untrusting of people around her than in the last book, which is logical because the person who she loved and trusted the most betrayed her. But funny enough this distrust does not apply to a woman that she meets for 10 minutes, tells her riddles, gives Carys a pair of slippers and disappears. Guess what, Carys eats it all up. Why? No clue.. Probably for a better ending or something..
Andreus is.. Just being Andreus I guess. Honestly I did not like him in the first book because he was a complete ass, and in this one he’s also going in an even more unlikable direction. He’s trying to be better, sure. It’s why that’s so darn annoying. As with Carys, ONE person opens their mouth for a second and he suddenly understands the truth! There were more reasons to doubt in the first book!!
The other characters are not even worth mentioning anymore. They all have a designated task to do so the book ends in a certain way, but there’s no longer any real life to them. It’s sad really.
Writing:
I loved the last book because it gradually build up the world as I read and left some pieces of the puzzle a mystery that I thought that I might find in this book. Boy was I wrong! Sometimes when I find a book a bit boring I tend to skim the pages to get the grasp of whet happened but maybe not all the finer details. But here that was done for me. Loads of stuff have no detailed explanations or more thought process than a gut feeling. I like to know how and why things are/works, but here is how I feel that that exchange went:
Me: Why did they do that?
Book: Because they did.
Me: Why Are the monsters here?
Book: They just are.
Me: Where did they come from?!
Book: … … Here, have some angsty writing!
Conclusion:
There are still some sparks of brilliance and some good writing I remember from Dividing Eden in here too, but not nearly enough of it. The book feels painfully uncompleted, and there are a lot of things that annoys me to bits about how things went down in the end and the questions left unanswered. 3 stars. The first book built something that could be great, but it ended on a very unenthusiastic note.
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