A review by hannahinpages
Girls of Storm and Shadow by Natasha Ngan

3.0

Reread April 2024:

My thoughts are pretty much the same as my first read. I love Wren, I love the romance between Wren and Lei, I liked the new characters, etc etc. But the plot of this book is rather slow (although parts of it I still enjoyed) and I hate the specific type of miscommunication and weird out of nowhere love triangle that's deployed in this book. I can also tell how distant I've grown from YA, as I continually wish this was adult and think it could've been better and dived deeper if it was.

OG review:
3.5

My feelings about GoSaS are very... Complicated.

My love for the characters remains. They are incredibly well written and their relationships with each other are engaging and meaningful. Lei and Wren's relationship has meant a lot to me since reading the first book, and I still absolutely stand by them. I also loved the new characters introduced in this book! They were a breath of fresh air and I adored how they interacted with Lei and Wren.

Where my feelings get messy is with, well, practically everything else. The plot moved quite slowly. Girls of Storm and Shadow suffers from second book syndrome. It feels like a filler, a lead up to the finale. The slowness of the plot was pressed forward with lies and miscommunication, which I have never liked. It made me wish to return to the first book.

However, I am super excited for the finale! I can feel it in my bones, that finale is gonna be goooooooooodddd.