A review by ellawh
Powerless by Lauren Roberts

lighthearted medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

2.0

This book felt like mixing the last 15 years’ bestselling YA dystopian/fantasy books in a blender.

Nonexistent world building. Unoriginal characters. Cliché and overused tropes. Poorly written romance. Overall very mediocre, and had no business being this long considering it did absolutely nothing.

“Welcome fellow Ilyans to the sixth ever purging trials”
Doesn’t sound familiar at all. In addition to being a total Hunger Games rip-off, it was also a Red Queen rip-off. (And RQ is infinitely more worthy of your time.)

The author just didn’t explore any dynamics in the world or between the characters, and the trials were extremely mediocre. I liked the concept of reversing the usual prompt of people with magic getting hunted. But she just didn’t explore that at all?? Huge disappointment to me, she could have done a lot of things with that alone. In the beginning Paedyn was constantly under the threat of being discovered, but as the story progressed it no longer served as a problem; and the lack of conflict made the book fall victim for the long-and-boring-middle-trap. And even in the beginning the threat of her being discovered as an ordinary felt distant.

I couldn’t help repeatedly rolling my eyes at the over excessive use of “thank the plague” … it can’t get anymore cliché than that, and not in a good way.