Rating: 1/5
Genre: YA, dystopian
First Published: 2016
Author: Victoria Aveyard
***SPOILER ALERT*** This is book two in the series and therefore the synopsis and this review might contain spoilers for the first book. If you have read the first book, or don’t mind some spoilers, proceed.
Synopsis: The world is divided by blood. The common folk, with red blood and the nobility, with Silver blood that affords them special abilities.
After escaping from Maven and his mother, Mare, Cal and the Scarlet Guard set out to find the other people like Mare: Red and Silver at once.
This is probably the biggest gap in rating I have ever had with two books in the same series. I enjoyed Red Queen. I’m not sure whether it was because I was relatively new to the world of YA literature when I read it and I have now grown as a consumer of this genre and I am more critical of it, or because this one was just worse than the first one. I suspect it’s a bit of both.
I did not like this book at all. It was a chore to read. The only positive thing I have to say about it is that it has a really beautiful cover. As you can tell by my synopsis, not much happens in it. It doesn’t have a plot-line to speak of and it’s just a long, boring and very annoying introduction to the next book.
However, this lack of plot is not even the reason I disliked it as much as I did. The reason for my dislike was mare. The most insufferable, entitled, self-pitying, spoiled, selfish brat of a character I ever did come across. I don’t remember her being such a bitch in the first book. Mare Barrow has de-throned America Singer from The Selection series as the most obnoxious character ever.
It’s funny, because in my video review of Red Queen, I called it “The Selection done right”. Well, not anymore. After reading Glass Sword, I prefer The Selection. At least that was just… silly. And it was actually entertaining to read.
Everything in this book was about Mare. Like she was the most important person in the whole universe. She fancies herself to be such a badass, such a leader, such an important, special snowflake. Just thinking about her makes me want to punch her. I honestly just wanted Maven to win. Just straight out. The ending, the last 3 phrases were the most satisfying of this entire book. And that is all I will say.
None of the other characters had any real substance and the few times they said or did something resembling a personality (usually about Mare), our special snowflake threw a temper tantrum. There is this one scene where Mare gets angry with this one girl and she thinks something along the lines of “all I could think about was educating this brat”. I nearly threw the book across the room at that point. It just made me so angry because Mare was the biggest brat there and also the other girl (one of the first to show any hint of personality) was actually right.
I could go on and on about how much I hate Mare Barrow. But I don’t want this review to turn into more of a rant than it already is. I usually try to express my opinions as professionally as I can in my reviews, but this book and this character has made me so angry that I just felt like I needed to say it. I would not have hated the book as much if it weren’t for this character. It was meh when it came to the plot, but Mare just made me angry. I cannot get behind her attitude and her entitlement.
A Book Nerd 
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