Brittany S

Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1) , Gemina (The Illuminae Files #1) , The crash is ruled an accident…until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon. Told in the alternating perspectives of Clara's investigation and Nick's last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date GODSGRAVE became a lot more plot-driven instead of world-driven, I think, and there was a heavy action focus with the gladiator concept taking over a big part of this book.

Told in the alternating perspectives of Clara's investigation and Nick's last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date It was really fun to actually be able to identify with the setting because usually the closest I get is Chicago proper or if a book is in the suburbs, usually it’s a fake suburb or has fake landmarks, so that was really fun! I liked following a character who was sane but grieving instead of someone who was on the breaking point, like some of the other Mary Kubica characters. Clara obviously had her moments of hardship and she sort of started to unravel at the end, but I liked that this was more thriller and solving a mystery than dipping into the psychological thriller and having a more unreliable narrator.

Real Max is nothing like Dream Max. No matter how you classify it, it was such a fun idea that was also neatly backed by science (some real, some fake novel science) that really brought the concept to life. I would have loved to see him more platonic and leave the drama for the other half of the love triangle romance between Max and Celeste, which was much more relevant to the book. I actually kind of liked that triangle because there was meaning behind Max’s relationship with Celeste

but I didn’t like the pacing and plotting here like I do with Sanderson’s books It was like it was pushed too quickly and maybe things like this should have been spread out into more than just three books, giving the second book time to set up another task for the team while slowly introducing these higher powers, giving more of a team bonding, time to care about the characters more and become really invested in them, and get the ball rolling on these bigger things coming into play. There were so many BIG BIG action sequences that I constantly felt like the book was ending with all of these climax-like moments. I don’t really care for where this book took the series and I’m just so disappointed with the pacing, lack of banter, and lack of character development that I really just don’t care what happens, plot-wise or character-wise.