This Shattered World (Starbound, #2)

This review was originally posted on The Bumbling Bookworm

This is the second book in the Starbound trilogy, and one I've been wanting to read for a while now.  I'm going to the book launch for Unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner later this month, so I thought I'd better read their other books beforehand.  I read These Broken Stars in early 2016 and LOVED IT, so I was super keen to continue on with the series.

While I really enjoyed this book, I didn't adore it as much as I did the last one.  I loved Lee and Flynn and I was totally invested in their romance, especially since it was slow burn.  The diversity was great - Lee is Chinese and Flynn is Irish, and there's absolutely no reason why you can't have diversity in space :) Also, the storyline had me hooked and I couldn't put it down.  On the downside, I found the snippets between the chapters to be a bit confusing and that put me off while I was reading.  I kept thinking they were Jubilee's memories but then that didn't make sense sometimes.  It took me until almost the end of the book to understand that they were the POV of a Whisper who had known Lee when she was a child on Verona, which was a bit anti-climactic.  Ultimately, I quite enjoyed it but I didn't LOVE it.
Check out the rest of my review here!

I loved everything about this book. Seriously. Going back to this series, I didn't think that the sequel could surpass the first one, but it did. It was action-packed from start to finish (honestly, there wasn't a slow or dull moment in this book! I could hardly catch a break from all the stuff going on!), but the plot was well-developed and you wouldn't get lost with everything going on. And there was still room for romance, that was beautifully build, very slowly and not like most YA novels were the characters fall in love at practically first sight. The romance was a little bit pushed aside, because, differently from These Broken Stars, where the protagonists were stranded in a deserted planet and had more time to interact only with each other and analyze their feelings, in This Shattered World, they're in the middle of a civil war, and there's other characters to interact with - characters that have actual importance to the plot and to the development of our leads. But the romance, when it was present, was lovely. Megan Spooner and Amie Kaufman are very in sync and their writing is amazing. The scene in the ship and inside the prison of the whispers was so beautiful it broke my heart.

Now, let's talk about our main characters. As much as I loved Tavern and Lilac (and they make a important cameo in this book, much to my happiness), Jubilee and Flynn's story made me forget a little bit about them. First of all, my love for Jubilee knows no bounds now. SHE'S AMAZING. Not only is she badass, but she is compassionate, brave and smart. She's a powerful female lead and her story and development through the book is a joy to follow. And then there's brave, sweet, my precious vanilla cupcake, Flynn. What can I say about this boy who was willing to do everything for his planet, his people, even save a trodaire, making his people turn on him, because he thought it could help save them in the end? I love love love him.

And now to the main antagonist. Roderick LaRoux is a disgusting piece of trash. He's cold, calculating and he doesn't care about anything other than his own interests. I knew he was scum since book 1 because all the things he did to Lilac and what happened in the secret facility in the planet her and Tavern crashed, but in this book we find how horrible he truly is, and how dangerous too. I hope that, in the end of book 3, he gets what he deserves.

In this book we're also introduced to one of the main characters in the next installment, Sofia Quinn, or silver-tongued Sofia, as Flynn calls her, because she can talk herself out or into anything. I liked her immediately, she's fiery, brave, smart and very sassy. I'm going to enjoy reading her adventures and I'm excited to see what she'll do next on Corinth. I honestly need to get my hands on the next book!

For as much as I loved 'These Broken Stars', I found 'This Shattered World' to be very disappointing. I feel like the world created in the first book was used as too much of a crutch for this one. The characters had very little development and the plot felt contrived and rushed.