A review by whimsicallymeghan
When She Reigns by Jodi Meadows

3.0

The Great Abandonment has begun and it has created shear panic among the Fallen Isle. Mira knows that her connection to the dragons is the key to stopping the destruction to save her people, but first she must find the bones of the first dragon, which of course is easier said than done. This leads her stepping into enemy territory, the Algotti Empire, to hopefully gain what she’s in search of and to put a stop to all the fighting. For a final novel in a trilogy, this was done well; it was a little on the long side, which caused plots to drag a bit, but for the most part the reader enjoyed this. There were definitely more dragons than either of the previous novels and that’s what this reader has been waiting for, to see the dragons. The whole plot with our main character, Mira and her connection with the dragons really played out well. The reader had no idea where it was going to go and it went in a direction that didn’t feel predictable. The ending was a little predictable in how happily ever after it felt, but the rest of the novel was good with its high stakes and action. The reader could have done without the romance plots, as they didn’t really do anything for them; if anything they didn’t feel a connection or a spark between the two characters ‘in love’, so that made it feel forced. Apart from that though, the characters were well developed, by the end we really got to know them and understand their reasoning’s behind why they did the things they did. The new characters that were introduced in this helped shape the course of the novel as the main characters had to use them as guides to try and fight for what they believed in. Sometimes things were a bit of a deception, which made things interesting, but sometimes they were genuine, which made it wholesome to read. But all the while, it was always fast-paced. Like the first novel in this trilogy, it pulled a lot from the Mortal Instruments in terms of words and places used, which kinda bummed the reader out because it made this feel less original than it could have been. The second novel didn’t really mention much of it so the reader thought it would be a first novel thing only, but it turned up here. But that aside, this still turned out to be a good story; the reader wasn’t sure at first, but this was a decent trilogy full of twists, turns and eventually dragons.