A review by ashesmann
Forged by Erin Bowman

5.0

At this point I don't even care about the plot anymore. There are holes and blah blah who cares. I just really like Bree and Gray. I love that a point is made to show that they are strong apart, but stronger together. They don't need each other, but they want each other. They don't define each other. I like that Bree is the strong one. The smart one. He's just the guy she loves. I love that she does't cave easy and makes him prove himself. I do wish they didn't bicker quite so much, but I feel like once they both come clean with how they feel and their future hopes a lot of that went away. Technically there is a love triangle, but not really. I thought the relationship was presented as healthy and it was surprising that both Gray and Bree had a sexual history. I don't advocate that for youths but for this world the author created it was nice to see a female character treated the same as the male lead.

And as far as a leader of the revolution goes, yeah they use his face, and sometimes Gray is in the lead, but he's by no means THE leader. He's uncomfortable with the narrative being twisted even if it is to give people hope. I also like that at one point Gray realizes that from the other side they could be viewed as terrorists. I just thought in these choices the author demonstrated a great deal of restraint, and self awareness. So many of these books make the teenage hero some sort of moody leader of the revolution. This author resisted.

Ends the way you'd expect.