My name is Amanda, I'm 15 years old, and I (obviously) love to read. I mainly read young adult, but I read the occasional adult fiction or middle-grade. I make YouTube videos about books, as well.
The beginning of this book was REALLY slow for me. I didn't really feel connected with most of the characters in the beginning, but that definitely changed as the story went on. My main issue with the beginning of the book was that you were introduced to 13 characters practically all at once and it was hard distinguishing between them. But you get to know them one by one as the story goes on, and I loved that. However, of the thirteen, you really only get to know 8.
I loved the creativity of this book! I absolutely loved the fun fact pages, and commercial breaks! The commercials were hilarious and were probably one of my favorite additions to the book.
Also, there were sort of two storylines happening at the same time... One with the Beauty Queens on the island, and the "classified" one with all these secret agents working on "Operation Peacock". At first, I found it confusing with the classified sections, but once the two story lines merged together it all made sense.
I read about the first 200 pages (half of the book) over a span of 3-4 days, which is REALLY slow for me. The last 200 pages, I read in one day. The ending was definitely my favorite part of the story by far. :)
I really liked this book. If it weren't for the beginning being slow and confusing for me, it would be a 5/5. But since the beginning was slow, it's a 4/5 for me. I would definitely recommend this book!
To be completely honest, this book was just okay for me. At the end of Rebel Angels, I thought to myself, "There can't possible be enough left of this story to tell that it needs 800 pages!" And really, this book could have been shortened to 500-ish pages if you take out some unnecessary things.
Felicity and Ann got were on my LAST nerve during this book. Whenever Gemma didn't want to go into the realms or wanted to do something else for the night, they would just storm off and say something along the lines of, "You're cruel!". Well really, this was mostly Felicity, but Ann followed her. It is plainly obvious that Felicity was only friends with Gemma because of the magic. Well, in the first book, Gemma had something over her (Felicity was with Ithal) and then they discovered the magic... And it seems like Felicity and Pippa were/are only friends with Gemma because she has the power to travel into the realms and reunite them. I swear, I can't think of more than fifty, maybe seventy-five pages where both Felicity and Pippa are happy with Gemma for this reason.
Also, Felicity and Pippa? Lesbians? Where did this come from? I'm sort of stealing this example from someone, but Felicity was seen with Ithal, and Pippa's dream was to have a knight in shining armor. Them being lesbians made absolutely NO sense to me. I personally actually like it when gay characters are introduced, but this seemed like an afterthought.
Another issue I had with this book is that I'm still sort of confused with some of the events that happened. Is Circe good or evil? She helped Gemma in the end, but she went against the Order and admitted she would have saved herself first? This is really the only thing I'm confused about, but it's annoying me. (Then again, I did read the end of this late at night while on NyQuil from a cold, so, I may have had my eyes half-closed while I read this part. Who knows?)
KARTIK? TREE? What the heck happened there? By the end, Kartik and Gemma where honestly the only two characters I actually cared about, and then Libba Bray had to go and ruin it. Why, Libba, why?
Also, the beginning was REALLY SLOW. It took me a week and a half to read this. Books generally take me less than a week. Yes, this is an 800 page book, but still. I could understand it taking me a full week (maybe), but a week and a HALF? I honestly was bored out of my mind for the first probably 200 pages.
Overall, this was my least favorite book in the series, but I didn't hate it. I actually sort of liked it... in some parts.
I really liked this book. I thought it was really beautifully written and very descriptive. I put this book in my 'slow beginning' bookshelf, though, and that's really my only complaint about it. The first two chapters were really intriguing, however, I felt once Gemma got to Spence, nothing THAT interesting happened for awhile. Her first week or two at Spence had almost nothing paranormal... But, other than that I really loved this book. The ending was really crazy, and the big 'shocker' at the end was not expected. Then again, I'm usually on the slow side of figuring things out, so maybe it was just me, haha! I would definitely recommend this book!
This book was just okay. After reading some of these reviews, I find myself agreeing more with the negative ones.
I didn't like the writing style. CC Hunter tried way too hard to make Kylie sound like a teenager. She actually sounded like she was around eleven or twelve rather than sixteen.
"Not wanting to come off like a scared rabbit confronting a hungry wolf - even though that pretty much described exactly how Kylie felt - she looked Fredericka directly in the eyes."
Throughout this whole book were strange similies that we all really could have done without. This is one of the more sane ones, but trust me, they get weirder.
I found this particular paragraph to be rude, and just not right:
"She assumed these must be the fairies, or Fae as he called them. Not that she blamed him for using the different version. No straight guy would want to be called a fairy. Not that anyone could mistake Derek for gay. Something about the way he walked and carried himself was overtly female-loving male."
I mean, come ON.
Also, I really didn't like how choppy the end of chapters were. Here's an example:
(last paragraph of Chapter 30)
"She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. 'Exactly how far away are these dinosaur tracks?'"
(first sentence of Chapter 31)
"'Not too far,' Lucas said."
This happened a lot. The chapters would just cut off in the middle of a conversation, or leaving an open-ended question. I think CC Hunter was trying to pull of suspense in these situations, but honestly, it didn't work.
Overall, this book was NOT one of my favorites. I will probably read the next books because I actually found the plot interesting, but I really don't know when. They aren't at the top of my TBR.