Book Review: The Winner's Crime

The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski (Winner's Trilogy #2)

Hardcover Edition-402 Pages

Genre- Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance

4/5 Lily Pads

Would I Recommend It? Yes

No Spoilers!

Hey there I'm back with a review. Today I am reviewing "The Winner's Crime". This is the second book in the "Winner's Trilogy". First of all, I really enjoyed the first book "The Winner's Curse". I had mixed feelings about this book. Read on to find out why. 

I'm not going to explain the plot because this review is spoiler-free and I don't wanna spoil it for anyone that hasn't read the first book yet. 

My Opinion

What can I say about this book. I still don't even know how I feel about it. It wasn't bad, but I didn't love it. 

First let's talk about the writing style.

I really like her writing style, but I found the third person writing style to be really boring, which is weird because I usually love third person. This book had a lot of tell and not enough show for me which is why there's not much action. 

I still love the world Marie created. I still think this is the most unique Fantasy series I've ever read. It really stands out in the YA genre, it's just so different in a good way. I can't really explain it. If you read this series, you'll understand it. This book was very political, it all about  both countries fighting against each other. Maybe the world building was a little too much for me. I love Fantasy books but I'm not a big fan of world building which is why I hate Dystopian books. I'm sort of in the minority though. 

The characters actually didn't bother me that much. The miscommunication got on my nerves a little, but I still liked the characters. I still like Kestrel but I think this book got me to like Arin more. 

The last thing I want to talk about is the pacing. This was my biggest issue with this book. Now I usually don't mind slow paced books but it annoyed me this time. The first half of the book was really good, it kept my attention. The second half was really boring. I have no idea why, I just got bored. I ended up skimming the last 40 pages because I couldn't get into it. I don't even know what happened at the end of the book. I've read reviews and everyone said the ending broke their heart. I didn't think the ending was that big of a deal. I mean, it was sad but it didn't really affect me that much. I just wanted the book to be over. So yeah, that's why I gave this book 4 Lily Pads, because the last half was hard to get into. I'm in the minority though. I'm sure everyone else loved the second half. This book was pretty long. It's about 400 pages but it was really slow. I usually don't care if a book doesn't have action in it, but there was no action at all. However, I didn't hate this book. I actually liked it and I still like this series. 

So yeah, that's my review. Even though I didn't love this book I'm still going to read the last book "The Winner's Kiss" because I already pre-ordered it and I wanna see how the trilogy ends. If you loved the first book I would still recommend this book. If you haven't read this series yet, go read the first book. It's so good and it's perfect if you wanna read a unique story. That's my review. Stay tuned for a review for "The Winner's Kiss". It comes out next week so I will probably read it soon. Thanks so much for reading. I'm not sure if this book is worth a buy. I actually got it as a Christmas present from my sister. If your library has it, borrow it, if they don't have it then I think it's worth the money. Thanks again for reading, bye :)