Reviews

Powerless by Lauren Roberts

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kgshore22's review against another edition

5.0

I laughed. I cried. I screamed, giggled, and kicked my feet. And now I’m furious. I bawled when I got to the last page and realized the book was ending on the most heartbreaking cliffhanger in the history of cliffhangers. I’m going to have to find a therapist just to get me through until July 2024 (almost a year from now!

esther_bester's review against another edition

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adventurous funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

j0aninja's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

3.0

sophielaura1's review

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adventurous challenging medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

3.5 stars ✨ I will start off by saying I didn’t hate this book, however, it was severely underwhelming. I was surprised at how many 5 star reviews there were until I saw that she was big on TikTok and apparently asked her fans to rate it before the book even came out 👀 Anywho, the things I liked about this book-

- dual pov, I always love getting both/multiple perspectives as it adds to the story
- romance plot was enjoyable
- both Paedyn and Kai were very likeable characters
- this series has a lot of potential

Critiques

- whilst I did say the romance was enjoyable, ‘darling’ quickly became repetitive, (there should’ve been some sort of conflict in the beginning where it went from mocking to romantic)
- it felt like a story I’ve already, aka, the hunger games (copy my homework but don’t make it obvious kinda vibe- I haven’t read Red Queen but it’s also compared to that)
- needed more in depth world building. World building is more than just the current surroundings, it’s also history that isn’t mentioned in one brief sentence
- More Adena scenes. Considering she was the most important person in Paedyns life we barely saw any interactions of them together past the very beginning of the book SPOILER (this is why Adena’s death didn’t really hit, I felt bad for Paedyn but didn’t end up connecting to Adena as she was mentioned more than she was acc there)
- more creativity was needed for the purging trials, they felt so lack luster and like there want much thought put into them

Overall, you could tell that this was a debut novel, but I don’t mean it in a bad way. Like I said, this series has a lot of potential and the author can only really get better from here.