2025 Reading Challenge discussion

Tell us what you thought of the book! You can leave your review here. Even if you read the book outside of the group, please feel free to let us know what you thought of it.

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It's been a long time since I've read this book, but I really enjoyed it and was such a sucker for the teenage anguish and romance. This book led me to read the second and also the third book in the series.

Red Queen is a Young Adult Dystopian Fantasy, told from the point of view of Mare, a young girl trying to survive everyday life; providing for-; and protecting her family against the Silvers – god-like humans with powers and abilities. Silvers (silver-blooded humans) rule Reds (red-blooded humans) in a Hunger Games meets Game of Thrones kingdom. Life is hard, and it’s about to get so much harder.

I give Red Queen a very respectable ### out of 5 octothorps (I don’t give half octothorps; I rather decide if I like it less or more and adjust my rating accordingly). My review contains spoilers, as this book is very difficult to review without giving away some character profiles and a plot overview.

See full review >> https://leoravdmerwe.wixsite.com/octo...

It felt so familiar because the plot has been done many times before albeit in slightly different guises. But, I did enjoy reading this particularly the world building and the interesting characters. A good, strong start to a series that I would like to continue at some point because there are some things I want to know.
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I really liked the beginning of this book. Unfortunately enough it went downhill after that, and by the time it was finished that was the only thing I was happy about. It is not badly written, and I'm sure it will probably please the audience it is intended for, but for me it was a bit too shallow, a bit too lazy in its construction, and the story and characters did not keep me captured enough to not notice the flaws. Through most of the book it was an agreeable read though, and it kept me relatively entertained despite them, but in the end it just fell short. My complete review is up here

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Meant to join in this discussion last month but was abroad whilst reading with not much internet access. I enjoyed the book and I definitely want to continue the series. I think I'd probably give it 3.5-4 stars? It didn't blow me away but it was good enough that I got through it fairly quickly.