A review by thenovelmaura
It Ends in Fire by Andrew Shvarts

adventurous dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

Thank you to NOVL for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review! I really, really wanted to like this book, and I was so excited about the action-packed beginning. Then... well, it just became a Harry Potter knock-off. I mean, not only were the wizard students sorted into what were essentially houses, there were four houses in total. Three of these "not" houses had amazing reputations, while one was for the misfit students, so we'll call this house "Not Hufflepuff." Every school year, the students in this houses compete against each other for points, but Not Hufflepuff never wins, how sad.

Anyway, superspy Alka needs to lead Not Hufflepuff to victory because she's part of a rebel group that wants to destroy the government (the winners get to go on a special trip to wizard parliament, so Alka wants to win and then blow the place up). They've supposedly been training her to infiltrate this wizard school, but her training was terrible because she keeps asking stupid questions that would definitely have gotten her caught in about 20 seconds if anyone had been paying attention.

I'm sad that the magic system and techniques were so cool, because the plot itself and the ending were terrible.
We're honestly expected to believe that Not Hufflepuff's victory was enough to destabilize an entire government. If it was that easy, why didn't the rebels overthrow them years ago? What's more, we get all of this via an infodump in the last five pages after the "main character faints after big battle scene" cliché.
I don't get how we're supposed to root for a main character who
cheats the entire time and takes all the credit from a member of the oppressed class that she's supposed to be "uplifting"
. Alka really gave me Mary Sue vibes, since she was this perfect, brilliant student who everyone was in love with, and everything was so easy for her. She wasn't the badass that I was shown in the first few chapters, and that was a huge letdown for me. This book went from a potential favorite to a huge flop so quickly that I got whiplash 
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