Powerless
Ratings125
Average rating3.7
Talk about a slow burn lol. Kind of gave me Hunger Games vibes only with powers. Looking forward to the next one!
4 Stars
That was a good ending. I loved it. Excited for the next book. There was lots of similarities to the Hunger Games and The Red Queen. There was a few cheesy YA parts.
Enemies to Lovers
Slow Burn
Zero spice
Lots of tension
dnf @ 30%
sorry i really don't like this so far and i'd rather spend my time reading stuff i enjoy :)
This book has so many issues... My main problem is the mammy cook. I will not be explaining further - look up the mammy trope
3.5
the starting was good, the banter was great but then i kind of figured out what will happen and i just lost interest. plus for some weird reason i was anxious as fuck reading the ending.
i dont know if i will be reading the next book when ever it comes out
Too many settings in this book are “borrowed” from my favorite series The Hunger Game, but it is still entertaining. Hope the next book will be more original and I expect it to be full of angst.
DNF at 30%. Felt like a mashup of many of the popular YA books of the last decade or so. Some elements seemed to be directly taken(with no subtlety whatsoever) from books like The Hunger Games, The Selection, Red Queen and Divergent.
There seemed to be no real reason for most of what was happening or had happened, the universe didn't seem well thought out and I did not care for any of the characters. Some of the scenes felt like they were almost copied and pasted from other books.
This story and these characters felt unoriginal and like it had no heart and no soul.
I was excited for this story but after 30% it gave me nothing much and I decided to DNF it to respect my own time.
Big YA mashup. We get Hunger games +divergent+ maze runner (+ some selection) and you get this book.
The romance was top notch tho. The enemies to lovers was done perfectly .
2.5★—
throne of glass meets the hunger games with a sprinkle of the triwizard tournament
Like the story and liked the characters but I struggled a lot to get into the first 200 pages of the book, I can't really pinpoint if it was Laura's writing not clicking with me or if the beginning of the book was really hard to get into.
Will still read the second book as I really liked Pae as a main character :)
actually enjoyed it more than i thought i would
not great but not bad
its just Ok
the fantasy aspect is found wanting and the romance wasn't great. i think this book was marketed as enemies to lovers but they were never really enemies... also kitt is better than kai anyway i fucking hate men full of themselves altho they both are kitt is less so lmfao pain
A very gripping story. I really liked it. Of course, parts of it is tooo similar to The Hunger Games, but nonetheless, I am very much invested in this series now. Also, I wish that the book had ended on a more positive note instead of leaving the reader so tense and worried.
I don't know that I've ever read a book that repeats itself quite as much as this one, not just repeating sentences/scenes from other PoVs, it repeats character thoughts and actions in the same scene too.
Powerless is an amalgamation of many popular Fantasy YA books and I feel like you can tell which ones the author pulled the ideas from as they happen, it's an odd feeling to be bludgeoned by tropes. I feel as though the author needed a good editor and a couple of revisions and it otherwise would've been a fairly standard YA fantasy/romance.
Not sure why so many booktubers/booktokers have recommended this as it's not particularly unusual in plot or characters, nor unique in prose. However, my understanding is that this is a young author, and their first book, so I'm hopeful that a future book may be better.
4.5 stars
This was so good!! I know a lot of people have compared this to The Hunger Games, but I found very little to link them. There's so many books out there which have trials so can be compared to a lot of books, but can also stand by itself as a great book!
I was immediately immersed in the writing, it wasn't the most detailed world building but the strength here are the characters. I liked all of them and enjoyed learning about the different abilities they have.
The trials were entertaining and I loved the face off towards the end. Then the end!! Loved it!
I can't wait for the next one
The plot of this book can barely hold it together, but oh was this a fun read. It's exactly what I needed, easy and fun.
Editing this three weeks later. Knocking down 1 star since upon reflecting, this is not a great book. As Leonie said (way more concise than myself) “no worldbuilding, no lore, no atmosphere, nonsensical and superficial politics, bland cardboard characters, romance that had no basis other than to fit the ‘enemies-to-lovers/knives-to-throats' checkbox”
3 stars! Unique premise, but I feel like the author was writing with the goal of being the next booktok viral romantasy instead of an actual good story and quite literally lost the plot because of it.
Imagine if the throne of glass competition in the first book was a hunger games style contest. Now imagine the plot is a convenient way to string trope after trope (forced proximity, “who did this to you?”, golden vs dark brother, enemies to begrudging allies, “i'm not like other girls because I want to bring my dagger to the ball”, morally gray love interest, “i hate that I don't hate you”) together with dual POV. The magic system was unique but not developed enough to buy me into it, and the plot holes made the character's actions feel random and insincere.
That being said, I never found myself struggling to reach for or finish this book, and the tension between Payden and whatshisface was really well written. The high stakes just weren't there for me since I have read other fantasy with much better world building and developed character motives. There were some scene for scene moments ripped off from acomaf and moments I rolled my eyes but this got me out of my DEEP reading slump which I will forever be grateful for. Will maybe read the next one, but only if I get it free on Libby ya feel? Ok bye