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A review by readwitharose
To Shatter the Night by Katherine Quinn
3.0
To Shatter The Night
3/5 stars
YA so no spice!
The spoilers you will find in this review are not super-spoilers, but I want to mark it as such anyway.
I FINALLY FINISHED IT!
To clarify, this book wasn’t overly long, but it was so hard for me to get through. It was my most anticipated read of this year after reading its predecessor, To Kill A Shadow, which was a five star read for me.
For me, this book fell heavily short of To Kill A Shadow in many, many ways. I felt the story either dragged on, or sped by. There wasn’t a good pace, where the first book was something I couldn’t bring myself to put down.
Picking up immediately where To Kill A Shadow left off, we follow Kiara and Jude in a 1st person POV as they navigate the world outside The Mist. Whoever, due to the lack of world building, I felt it so hard to follow. It mentions a few random towns, but the book mostly takes place in one small area and left me wanting more.
The banter held strong in To Shatter A Night, but I felt the character development took a step backwards (or maybe just a step in a direction I didn’t enjoy). The author chose to bring in new characters and old ones for no real reason other than to have love interests, LGBTQ representation, and people who were red shirts (you know in Star Trek? The ones that have no point but to die? Yeah, that). Now, I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy the love interests that were brought on, I’m just saying that it was so unnecessary and really didn’t bring much to the plot. Their story could’ve been told in a spin off duology much like the author of Serpents and The Wings of Night did with her universe.
Speaking of love interests; the dynamic between Jude and Kiara was so hard for me. Their characters were basically turned into love-struck morons. Jude’s badass character was done dirty when Quinn decided to make him a sniveling p*ssywhipped bitch (I have no nice way of saying it so I’m going hard here). Kiara kept most of her harsh, stabby vibes, but parts of her character just seemed off to me.
Some pieces of the story didn’t line up either, which frustrated me. This is supposed to be a fantasy world, yet they had “little packets” for the condoms in the fade to black scene (YA) which I could only attribute to the author trying to encourage teens reading this to use protection, but to me it was just so unnecessary and out of touch with the overall story. That whole scene could have been written differently and been completely fine. It’s a YA book, you don’t have to add a fade to black sex scene.
The only thing that kept this book from being a two star for me was the last 40 ish pages. The pace picked up and started focusing on the plot as apposed to the characters and their relationships.
There are so many more things I could get into, but at this point it feels like beating a dead horse, so I’ll just say that, overall, I didn’t love this book, which sucks because of how much I truly adored To Kill A Shadow (I literally have 3 copies of it). I was hoping for more and I was let down by my own high expectations. I hope that, if you’re reading this book, you love it. I wish I did.
3/5 stars
YA so no spice!
The spoilers you will find in this review are not super-spoilers, but I want to mark it as such anyway.
I FINALLY FINISHED IT!
To clarify, this book wasn’t overly long, but it was so hard for me to get through. It was my most anticipated read of this year after reading its predecessor, To Kill A Shadow, which was a five star read for me.
For me, this book fell heavily short of To Kill A Shadow in many, many ways. I felt the story either dragged on, or sped by. There wasn’t a good pace, where the first book was something I couldn’t bring myself to put down.
Picking up immediately where To Kill A Shadow left off, we follow Kiara and Jude in a 1st person POV as they navigate the world outside The Mist. Whoever, due to the lack of world building, I felt it so hard to follow. It mentions a few random towns, but the book mostly takes place in one small area and left me wanting more.
The banter held strong in To Shatter A Night, but I felt the character development took a step backwards (or maybe just a step in a direction I didn’t enjoy). The author chose to bring in new characters and old ones for no real reason other than to have love interests, LGBTQ representation, and people who were red shirts (you know in Star Trek? The ones that have no point but to die? Yeah, that). Now, I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy the love interests that were brought on, I’m just saying that it was so unnecessary and really didn’t bring much to the plot. Their story could’ve been told in a spin off duology much like the author of Serpents and The Wings of Night did with her universe.
Speaking of love interests; the dynamic between Jude and Kiara was so hard for me. Their characters were basically turned into love-struck morons. Jude’s badass character was done dirty when Quinn decided to make him a sniveling p*ssywhipped bitch (I have no nice way of saying it so I’m going hard here). Kiara kept most of her harsh, stabby vibes, but parts of her character just seemed off to me.
Some pieces of the story didn’t line up either, which frustrated me. This is supposed to be a fantasy world, yet they had “little packets” for the condoms in the fade to black scene (YA) which I could only attribute to the author trying to encourage teens reading this to use protection, but to me it was just so unnecessary and out of touch with the overall story. That whole scene could have been written differently and been completely fine. It’s a YA book, you don’t have to add a fade to black sex scene.
The only thing that kept this book from being a two star for me was the last 40 ish pages. The pace picked up and started focusing on the plot as apposed to the characters and their relationships.
There are so many more things I could get into, but at this point it feels like beating a dead horse, so I’ll just say that, overall, I didn’t love this book, which sucks because of how much I truly adored To Kill A Shadow (I literally have 3 copies of it). I was hoping for more and I was let down by my own high expectations. I hope that, if you’re reading this book, you love it. I wish I did.