A review by tinysierra
Echo by Alyson Noël

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

1.25

TLDR:
  • The romance is unbelievable.
  • The writing is still bad.
  • Read Elatsoe by Dacie Little Badger instead. 

I liked this book a little better than the first one. 

The Duel POV between Daire and Dace made the story more interesting.

I loved that we got to see more of the side characters. We got to see Daire and Dace hang out with Xotichl, Lita, and Auden. We get introduced to a new character, bringing more drama. Jacy and Crickett aren’t really fleshed out at all, but they’re not too important, anyway. 

I think it’s interesting that when we see Dace with Xotichl, he seems to treat her more delicately than her other friends do. He has to stop himself from helping her when she doesn’t ask for it and remind himself that she can take care of herself. Maybe it’s to show how he’s so full of goodness, he can’t help but want to watch out for her? Or maybe it’s just because he’s a man, idk.

This is one of the rare YA books where the protagonists parents (mothers) are present and actively trying to look out for them, even if they seem a bit overbearing. 

The writing is a twinge better in the fact that there are less huge chucks of dialogue. But, I wanna know who let Alyson describe Xotichl eyes as “blue/gray” every single time. Who let her do that? I find that even more offensive than Dace’s “icy-blue” gaze LOL like what the heck. Why is there a slash? Why couldn’t she just say blue? Why couldn’t she alternate or use different descriptive words?

I am not one to critique romances very often. I am usually happy accept any form of insta love as being legit. But I can’t with Daire and Dace. This book picks off like 2 weeks after the end of Fated, so we don’t get to see their relationship progress any before this book starts. What we get to see when this book starts is them having making out and then having sex. There is more to relationships than sexual intimacy so it really annoys me that this is all we see from them before they’re forced to “break up” because of the whole prophecy. We get to see them lusting after each other, talking about how they can’t live without each other, but why? Why do they love each other? Because they’re fated to be together. That’s it. There’s no build up. It’s not believable to me. They love each other because the story says they’re supposed to and that’s it. The lock and key thing is cute but again, they state in the text that they’ve only been together for six weeks. They hardly know each other enough to know they want to spend forever together. 

Also, it’s weird to me that Daire’s vision quest was to become reborn as a Seeker but Dace’s vision quest was to stop Daire from failing her task. Dace’s purpose is only to further Daire’s growth… not to grow as a person himself, separate from her, or even separate from Cade. I could be wrong (maybe I just don’t have faith in Alyson Noël’s writing), but I have doubts that this was truly to demonstrate that he’s the Echo. I believe it was just to show how fated Daire x Dace’s relationship is. 

I also hate how heteronormative/allonormative this series is. Auden and Xotichl are paired up. Jennika had someone propose to her. Paloma and Chay are a thing. I’m not saying that there can’t be multiple couples in a book but it just gives off the vibe that you can’t be single and happy, especially when we see Lita still so hung up on being broken up with by Cade. It’s not the fact that she’s upset about being broke up with, it’s the fact that she’s upset that she’s single. Because single = miserable in most people’s minds. This is a super damaging mindset that leads to real people staying in toxic relationships because they’re afraid of being alone.

I know the scene where Cade almost sexually assaults Daire is supposed to show how disgusting he is as a character and how overpowered she is at the moment but it made me sick. Dace also brings up quite a few times how upset he is that his mothers assault lead to his and Cade’s conception. 

I understand why the Seeker is connected to the elements but why does Paloma say that an important job of the Seeker is to control the weather? Is she supposed to prevent climate change? Maybe I’m thinking about this too hard lol
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