This book was a struggle to read, the first half felt slow, nothing really happened and it was a chore to read, which was a major disappointment considering how much I loved the first book.
However, I am glad I stuck with it, once it got going it was just as beautiful as the first book.
Perfectly representing the long-term affects of the kind of abuse Wren and Lei have been through which isn’t often considered in books.

This story and characters are important for those of us that can relate, and for the people coming from the same culture, struggles and trauma.
It is obvious when reading that each issue/sensitive topic is faced with respect, care and most importantly with real experience and understanding from the author. Not just someone deciding how it should feel to experience something and then how easily and quickly to recover from it.

This book also has realistic complexities in the relationships between the characters, romantically or otherwise.
I like that the relationships and healing aren’t linear, everyone has ups and downs with arguments, differences of opinions/beliefs and recover from each ordeal in different ways. With their own issues, triggers, coping mechanisms and flaws.

At times this series so far has made me laugh, tugged at my heart and really made me care for and hurt with the characters.
I’m looking forward to the next book and seeing where it takes them all





Highlights-

‘This is a language I understand. A language of pain and horror that I, too, have learned.
That too many girls have had to learn.
When Wren finally falls still, we don't move, still clinging to each other in the water, wrapped in velvet steam.
"He's alive," she whispers.
And it's not like the previous times she spoke those words today. This time, they are full of everything that simple sentence means.
The horror and realness of what we've been through. The fact that we'll most likely have to face the demon who did it to us again. Her words are haunted ones, and I feel them in my bones.
A sickening cocktail of hate and terror and shame shoots down my veins. For a moment I'm once again that frightened girl in his bedchambers, trying to drag my soul out of my body so I can pretend the hurt isn't real. That what's happening is happening to someone else, in another lifetime, another world. Not here, not now, not this, not me.
But it was me.
It was me, and it was Wren, and it was the other girls, my friends and so many more before us, and no doubt more to come.
“He’s still alive." Wren repeats, sounding so hollow and lost it breaks my heart. I wrap my arms tighter around her. Something dark unspools in the pit of my belly.
"It just means we have a second chance” I tell her, my voice cold. "For what?"
I whisper the word into her ear.
"Revenge"

***

"Wren," I say carefully, “being vulnerable isn't a flaw. It's the most beautiful thing in the world. If you were invincible, being brave would be easy. It's the fact that it isn't easy, that we have to constantly work and work at it, make ourselves believe in our own strength even when it feels like we're worth nothing, have nothing, can do nothing…. that's power. That's resilience.." I squeeze her arm.
“There is nothing stronger than people who endure the worst hard-ships in the world, and still raise their fists at the start of a new day to fight all over again.”


***

‘And for Wren, that's all she's grown up knowing. His obsession. His hatred." She spares me a sideways look.
"You're not the same. I see you, the way you fight. The way you are toward others. You're soft where they are hard. You have love when they only have hate." She squeezes my hand. "Hold on to that as tightly as you can, Lei. Because war will do everything it can to take that goodness from you. I think sometimes people forget there will be a time after all of this--for the lucky ones, at least. And when that time comes, we'll all have to live with what we have done.." She stares out at the horizon, where Merrin's silhouette has already disappeared. “And what we have left of ourselves.” ( )