Rating: 4 stars
Synopsis: "Today is my last day as Violet Lasting. Tomorrow I become Lot 197."
Sold for six million diamantes, Violet is now Surrogate of the House of the Lake in the centre of the Lone City, the Jewel. Her sole purpose is to produce a healthy heir for the Duchess – a woman Violet fears and despises.
Violet is trapped in a living death, her name and body no longer her own. She fights to hold on to her own identity and sanity, uncertain of the fate of her friends, isolated and at the mercy of the Duchess.
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It was really fast paced which kept me engaged throughout; there was never a moment where the action or suspense really let up, there was always something happening which I thought was actually a nice change from most books and was something a little bit different. In most books, you have high and low or fast and slow paced moments, which can sometimes mean you becoming disengaged from the plot or the characters. In this book, you really don't have a chance to lose interest! I didn't feel like the plot was being rushed though - it just bumped along nicely, until the end. At the end of the book, it did start to feel a little bit rushed; like there was so much that needed to happen in such a short space of time, but overall I think the pacing of this book was amazingly well done.
I thought the characters in this book were really well developed and complex. Violet is a really strong protagonist and powered through all the obstacles and challenges thrown at her in the best way that she could. I actually really liked the Duchess. I thought she was such an interesting character because you're never sure whether you can trust her or not and, although what she's doing to Violet is horrible she does take care of her, a lot better than Raven's mistress looks after her, so you're left feeling a little bit confused about the Duchess and her true motives when it comes to Violet.
Lucien is essentially Cinna in The Jewel. He gets Violet ready for the auction and then helps her fight the system. I think Lucien is the one character that I just wasn't that interested in because of this similarity.
I loved the world building and specifically, the hierarchy of the houses. It was so interesting to see how the houses interacted with each other and the competitiveness of the lower ranked houses to get a good surrogate in order to move up in the social standing. Those scenes were some of my favourites in the whole book.
The romance was good, if a little rushed. It happened very quickly but, I did like the romance aspect of the book. I enjoyed finding out about Ash's past and how he ended up in the house under the Duchess' thumb like Violet. He was a really likable character and I loved the scenes with him and Violet, even if their romance was the definition of a whirlwind romance!
The only reason this book didn't get 5 stars is because the end was predictable. Not enough to stop me from reading till the end, or putting me off, it just was very predictable because most first books in a dystopian series end in the same way. All in all though, this was a really enjoyable book and, if you enjoy reading YA dystopia then I would really recommend it.
Image from Goodreads - no Copyright Intended
No comments:
Post a Comment