La reina roja

For a little while, I thought this book might get four stars. I was intrigued by the world set-up, for all that it has kind of been done before. Putting it all together uniquely was done well, though, and I liked the little bits of everything. Almost X-Men style powers in a dystopian novel about crazy class conflicts where the differences are actually in the blood? Sounded quite cool. And for quite some time it was going well. We had the sort of pseudo-love triangle, but I thought I knew where it was going, I approved, and it never really got in the way. Mare was interesting, there was a bunch of different conspiracies going on at once and it was difficult to figure out who to trust, and the different powers manifested by each family were fascinating. I loved that aspect of the story--it was probably my favorite. Figuring out who had what and what that meant was amazing. I was willing to overlook a few minor inconsistencies (seriously, everyone just assumed that she had never in her life bled before? Because she should have noticed it was literally silver if she did) in order to get swept up in the story, because I was intrigued. Cal was faintly annoying to me in that way that only the crazily-into-war young prince set up as a potential love interest can be. I will never get the attraction to that type, but hey, they are popular in YA fiction of all types, and that is fine. All brawn and little real brains, almost no thought of the future--I get that some girls find them attractive, but they have never been interesting to me. But this was not a concern, because we had Maven. Maven, clever and thoughtful and genuinely caring about the future. Maven, who<spoiler>joined a revolutionary group not just for Mare, but for the principal of the thing. Maven, who was willing to do what needed to be done for his country.</spoiler> And then comes the twist. I did not like the twist. I did not like it at all. I did not like where the story ended up in the end and I am really disinclined to pick up the rest of the series, honestly. I don't want to see how this will play out, because it already relied on a few too many tropes for me, and with the twist in place, I feel like it is going to be all trope, all the time from here on in. I just don't terribly care. I'm kind of disappointed, because it seemed like it was going somewhere interesting, but now I don't feel invested at all. 

I loved this book!! The storyline had me captivated from the beginning. I loved the character growth and plot twits! This book had me thinking one thing is going to happen and then it changes to something completely different! So good! Highly recommend and can not wait to jump into glass sword!

Definitely started off. Weird but definitely ended on a high now.