A review by readingwithhippos
Righteous by Joe Ide

3.0

I let this sit a while after finishing it, hoping it would grow on me or I would at least figure out why I wasn't enamored with this second installment the way I was with the first, but I'm still not sure what the problem was. In IQ, Isaiah was weird but relatable and had a strong sense of justice. In Righteous, he seemed to take a hard left into arrogant and uncaring. I also really struggled with the timeline, which jumped forward and back and left me totally lost at times. I'm not the kind of reader who needs spoon-fed, but in this case, cues at the beginnings of chapters (like "six months earlier," "Las Vegas," etc.) would have helped a lot. It almost felt like the chapters got mixed up and printed out of order on accident, because the time hops didn't add anything (except confusion). I will say I am a fan of the new potential love interest, but whether that's enough to make me pick up book 3 remains to be seen.