A review by nicolemm_author
Defy by Raine Thomas

4.0

Find more of my reviews on my blog, The Reader's Antidote

Apparently this is a companion series of this same world. I haven't read the books yet, but I did receive them for review from the author. And it's a fantasy world I'm definitely interested in. There aren't a lot of fantasy books out there in YA and so I was at first confused as to what kind of world I was being introduced to. But I was really excited to learn that it was a fantasy world. I think the only big thing I didn't like about this one was the parts that involved politics. I honestly didn't care and kind of skimmed over it to get the basic ideas of what was going on besides the rescue of Tate and the budding romance between Tate and Zachariah.

Tate was someone I could relate to. Maybe not with feathers in my hair, because as much as I love peacock feathers I don't think I'd look as good in them as Tate does. But she's stubborn like I am and I'm less inclined as I get older to listen to authority. And I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to see someone fly! Problem is, Tate gets taken by this kind of dragon thing called a kragen. And they're not really known to leave their victims alive. But it turns out the kragen is a sort of pet that belongs to a man named Zachariah. Zachariah saves her and the two of them become bonded somehow, to the point that they feel each others' pain. But let's just say that don't get along that well at first. They both have a fire in them.

It all ended sort of abruptly. Zachariah makes his... choice... at the end and then we're not exactly left on a cliffhanger but we're not given much time to process what really happened. And on top of that, I felt like some of the other characters weren't as three-dimensional as I would have liked. For the length, though, the characters were surprisingly delved into, I just think there could have been more character development. I can't wait to see what happens next now that Tate and Zachariah are in an interesting and confusing situation. While I enjoyed the romance, I'm hoping that this strange step they took won't automatically take the romance out of this series. Because while I loved this strange world, it was really the relationship between Tate and Zachariah that intrigued me. I'm so excited to see what happens next! I'll definitely have to start on the companion series.