Skip to main content

Tricia Levenseller: The Shadows Between Us

 This was another book we read for our book club.

The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller follows the independent and murderess Alessandra. Alessandra has been overlooked her entire life, including by her first love, Hector. But, Alessandra has a plan to change everything: convince the Shadow King to fall in love with her, then kill him and take his throne. As she moves to the palace and gets knee-deep in the intrigue, things change. Will Alessandra go through with her cunning plan, or will she give in to her heart and marry the most powerful man in the world?

Truthfully, I desperately wanted to like this book, but I just... didn't. It was shockingly sappy and incredibly predictable. I had Alessandra pegged from the very start. She wasn't going to kill the Shadow King, and she was certainly going to fall in love with him. While the journey to get there wasn't as obvious, I knew the outcome from the very start. Murdering Hector and the subsequent discovery of his body certainly complicated things. There wasn't enough intrigue and the characters were flat and unoriginal. I did like the magical concept behind the king's power, but it was underdeveloped and poorly executed. In all, I felt that this book had so much potential that it really didn't live up to, and the whole thing felt cliche. To be honest, I almost wished Alessandra would just kill the king, and prove to be just as ruthless as she tries to make us believe.

The Shadow King was also cliche. He wants everyone to see him as ruthless, but his displays of temper and power are childish. His desire to conquer the world feels like he wants to appear to be this power-hungry bad-a, but he'd rather play with his dog and sit in the rose garden than go to meetings. It was obvious he was going to go for Alessandra from the start as if she knew the magic formula to get his attention.

Almost all of the conflicts in this book were resolved much too easily. Alessandra had a convenient out for every problem in the whole book. Oh, this other guy you're not interested in is chasing you? You find out he's actually a bandit causing major problems and can get him arrested. Oh, these two friends of yours don't want to get married? Sure, set the obnoxious fiancee up with the bandit you don't like, how convenient. Oh, you killed your ex-boyfriend, I pardon you. But you wanted to kill me?! How dare you! Oh, you made it back in time to find the villain monologuing instead of killing his brother, again, too convenient. There was no failure for Alessandra. She got everything she wanted, and even the big failure didn't feel desperate or bad enough, because within a few pages it was resolved.

Overall, I didn't enjoy this book really all that much. The author has a great writing style, and I liked the witty main character. I wished this book had been less cliche and had more depth to it.

I rated it ⭐⭐



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Forgotten Thoughts--Eragon vs. The Belgariad

I forgot to mention something I noticed about Eragon in my last post.  If any of you have read David Edding's Belgariad series, then you might have realized that many ideas about the workings of magic in Eragon follow along with the Belgariad .  For example, the "Be Not" principle is a very important one in book three of the Belgariad  and has some of the same effects that it does in Inheritance (book four of the cycle).  "Magic" in Eragon can be equated to "sorcery" in The Belgariad .  Magic in both series depends upon your personal strength.  You can't bring people back from the dead (this is a common rule throughout all of the magical fantasy).  Another similarity is that there are different kinds of magic.  Shades are spirits trapped in the mortal world in Eragon .  Eddings actually portrays basically the same idea as an actual demon.  Mispronunciation or breaking of concentration will cause the Shade or demon to destroy the ma...
2 comments
Read more

Dashka Slater: The 57 Bus

 I picked this one up to possibly use in my AP class. It had been recommended to me by one of my coworkers and I was trying to decide if it was worth using in AP. The 57 Bus  recounts the true story of two teens whose happenstance meeting on a public bus in Oakland, California. Sasha identified as nonbinary, liked to wear skirts, and went to a private school in Oakland. Richard was a black student, a good kid, but also tended to get mixed up in trouble. He went to a public school in Oakland's poorer side of town. One day, Sasha was riding the bus as they always did back to their house from school. This time though, Sasha fell asleep on the long ride. Richard and his friends boarded the bus as well, and seeing the skirt hanging off the edge of the seat, decided to see what would happen with a lighter. The material of the skirt burst into flames, and suddenly Sasha was burning. This story is unbelievably sad for both teenagers involved. In working with teenagers, one thing is tr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Robert Louis Stevenson: Pavilion on the Links

For anyone who has read Stevenson's short story "Pavilion on the Links" here is a short discussion of the story and a key passage.  For anyone who hasn't, here is a short explication dealing with a passage from the short story.  The prompt is as follows: In "The Pavilion on the Links," Frank Cassilis, the story's narrator, describes his friend Northmour: "My wife and I, a man and a woman, have often agreed to wonder how a person could be, at the same time, so handsome and so repulsive as Northmour.  He had the appearance of a finished gentleman; his face bore every mark of intelligence and courage; but you had only to look at him, even in his most amiable moment, to see that he had the temper of a slaver captain.  I never knew a character that was both explosive and revengeful to the same degree; he combined the vivacity of the south with the sustained and deadly hatreds of the north; and both traits were plainly written on his face, which was...
Post a Comment
Read more