this book was so good. i cried like three times. literally read the last few pages through tears.
listen the author can call remy a himbo all they want but he is not a himbo in my heart. i feel like its mostly just that he doesnt understand politics and doesnt care to. there were a few moments where i could squint and be like yeah himbo energy but overall not really. he's lowkey annoying but i also liked him probably 70% of the time. i adore xiaodan and zidan though so i am sat for book 2. killing naji at the very end was sick and twisted actually. i did really enjoy this book though.
1.5 ⭐️
i will say it wasnt as bad as i thought it was going to be but tiktok hypes this up WAY too much. it was not amazing. wasnt even great! not even sure i could say it was good. so many parts of this felt like stolen portions of different media that was then all mashed together. a main character in a book about an island and rulers named isla crown..are you serious? and apparently she pronounces it eye-sla....girl.
alex threw SO many plot twists in towards the end it was just confusing and frustratingly hard to keep up with. Not to mention the fact that it felt like it got fairly rushed toward the end. we spent how long reading about days 1-50 and then all of a sudden the days just started flying by. not that i wanted this train wreck to go on any longer. it was actually quite boring and then everything started happening at once. it feels like she just tried to throw every trope she could think about into this book.
i love our one gay character who lost the person he loved and is sad. don't you just love when a gay character is thrown in for the purpose of suffering? i mean why make him gay at that rate, just so you can shout diversity? lets not forget i believe he also happens to be the one poc character in a book where the author claimed diversity.
the names of the realms..wildLING, sunLING, starLING, moonLING, skyLING...oh and nightshade. have some originality i beg.
and lets also discuss the fact that the main character is what like around 20? and of course both love interests are over 500 years old. of course! she has no chemistry with either of them. the one she supposedly had chemistry with erased her memory yet she still fell in love with him out of nowhere. and oro..they have NO chemistry at all. literally he saves her a few times, she saves him. boom they're in love?? okayy. whatever you say babe.
alex can go on and on about how shes a new york times bestselling author and has a movie deal all she wants but that means nothing when your book is just awful.
i also just feel like a lot of stuff about this damn island makes no sense but whatever.
i originally was going to read the second one just for the sake of knowing how it continues but now im not even sure i want to put myself through that.
