2.78k reviews for:

Carve the Mark

Veronica Roth

3.65 AVERAGE

adventurous dark tense fast-paced
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes

Compared to the connection between Four and Tris, I had a difficult time believing in Akos and Cyra. Cyra felt too consumed in her belief that she was terrible and Akos seemed too ready to forgive to make them truly believable characters, much less two characters that have a meaningful bond. I sort of wanted more depth from Cyra in particular, I felt as though her entire personality was her self loathing mixed with her current gift and I felt like a few more facets would have rounded her out more. That’s not to say she wasn’t a great character, I love a strong female, but she seemed a little flat.

5 (2017) -> 3 (2024)


“You want to see people as extremes. Bad or good, trustworthy, or not. I understand. It's easier that way. But that isn't how people work.”

I was surprised by this book. After the disappointment that was the ending of the Divergent trilogy, I wasn't excited to read more of Roth's work and so, when this came out, I had no plans on reading it. But I'm involved in a Buddy Read group and this was May's pick, so I said 'oh what the hell, I can always DNF if I'm not engaged'. And BOOM, I was hooked almost from the get-go.

Despite all its mishaps, there was one thing that kept me reading Divergent until the very end: the writing. I forgot how fluid and quick Roth's writing is. Here she offers these spacial enemies-to-lovers with space politics and a fantastic elements thrown in to spice things up. The romance is well-written and well-paced, the novel is fast-paced without being rushed. And, oh joy, she actually manages to write a male POV that doesn't seem a version of the female POV! You can actually distinguish the characters (and not just because the male POV is in third person).

The plot was a bit predictable, but she managed to make it interesting anyway and there were a few plot twists that managed to keep me interested in reading the final installment. I'm really happy that my experience with this was good because I went in expecting the worst and now I'm excited to pick up the sequel!

I liked it but I didn’t love it. Cool world-building but not particularly thought provoking. Glad I read it after the sequel was released, because depending on how that goes, I may bump it up to four stars.

It took a while to get into it, a bit slow, but as soon as Cyra’s chapters began it became much more interesting and I very much enjoyed it!

Crave the Mark is an interesting Sci-fi dabbled teen book. I don't normally find teen books interesting, but this one was. Except for the cliff hanger ending, I liked most parts, though I feel the author fought really hard for the readers to be able to identify with Cyra. It sounds like there are bigger secrets about her own life than she could fathom, but seems like she was two completely different characters as well. One which was lacking any kind of gumption and was a rag-doll for her brother Ryzek to manipulate. And two, this person who stood up to every individual, and had a great deal of self-loathing for the other side of herself mentioned above. It was hard for me to marry both images into my mind of this character. It stands that she is either a very interesting, complex character, or that the author tried to do too many things with this character (flaws and attributes) and failed. Yet to be determined. When reading every other character I found it easy to identify with their emotions, where they stood on morality and how their anger ebbed and flowed within them. I understand that many of those characters cannot come to terms with how angry Isea is, but that is the part of her character that makes sense.
adventurous mysterious sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The most recent of my re-delvings into YA scifi. I quite enjoyed this one! I'm a sucker for good world-building, and I was intrigued by the idea of the current and how it affected each society differently. I got a ridiculous amount of glee out of the fact that these kids aren't gorgeous supermodels (unlike, it seems, the majority of YA, which spends an eon describing everyone's physical appearance in hyperbolic terms).

I was blissfully unaware of the controversy surrounding the book until after finishing it: racist overtones (I genuinely did not pick up on this), glorification of self-harm (never occurred to me to view it as such, especially given plenty of Earth cultures' history of marking for the dead), not condemning rape culture (in the sense that Cyra's gift is implied to be in some way her fault, so I can somewhat see their point there, although other characters refute this), and glorifying or downplaying those who suffer from chronic pain (again, would not have occurred to me, although perhaps because I'm not a chronic pain sufferer). It's very possible I'm just an oblivious reader, but I do think it's also possible some of the controversy may be an over-reaction. All of this was not helped by the scandal that the publisher paid for a ridiculous number of reviews, which Goodreads doesn't permit.
dark emotional
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes