A review by rnhess
A Light in the Sky by Shina Reynolds

3.0

Well this book was frustrating. It had such good promise, but I was pretty let down. First of all, as another review mentioned, this book feels very old school YA. That's not a bad thing, by any means! It actually brought me back to my high school days, and I really liked the feel of it. But.... I've also grown up, and maybe that's the problem in itself. I can't ignore all of the flaws of the book. To start, there was sooooo much world building and description that it was and still is hard to keep track of. The author uses all these new, made-up words for all the cities and people and yada yada. Then she just describes the history/lore to you, rather than show you through the story. Like, here's all these different lands, this is why they are fighting, these are the good guys and the bad guys, and now let's start the story. I want to feel immersed, not lectured. Second of all, the main character, Aluma, is so dumb and naive. I get it, she's only 16 ( or 17, I forget), but she's so stupid. Literally, around the 80% mark, I found myself shaking my head and having to pause my reading because she did something so dumb. She ruins plans, gets people killed, and then is like, "no way, I didn't think that would happen! It can't be true!" Lady, shut up, you are getting on my nerves. The last big flaw that every author should know to stay away from at this point is a LOVE TRIANGLE! Seriously. Everyone hates them. This book started out with a decent love interest, and you get a little invested into them, but then they have to add a second love interest. At that point in the story, I felt nothing for either one. I felt no connection to the romance and rolled my eyes every time she kissed a new boy or fantasized about them while in the middle of a life threatening mission. Honestly, after writing down my feelings for this book, I'm realizing how much it annoyed me, but I'll still keep it as a 3 star review. Read at your own risk, that's all I'm saying.