Lightlark by Alex Aster

#BookTok phenomenon and award-winning author Alex Aster delivers readers a masterfully written, utterly gripping YA fantasy novel Welcome to the Centennial. Every 100 years, the island of Lightlark appears to host the Centennial, a deadly game that only the rulers of six realms are invited to play. The invitation is a summons--a call to embrace victory and ruin, baubles and blood. The Centennial offers the six rulers one final chance to break the curses that have plagued their realms for centuries. Each ruler has something to hide. Each realm's curse is uniquely wicked. To destroy the curses, one ruler must die. Isla Crown is the young ruler of Wildling--a realm of temptresses cursed to kill anyone they fall in love with. They are feared and despised, and are counting on Isla to end their suffering by succeeding at the Centennial. To survive, Isla must lie, cheat, and betray...even as love complicates everything. Filled with secrets, deception, romance, and twists worthy of the darkest thrillers, Lightlark is a must-read for fans of legendary fantasy writers Marie Lu, Marissa Meyer, and Leigh Bardugo.

There is so much to love about this book! The only reason it's 4 an not 5 stars is the romance elements felt forced to me like could be placement but the relationships didn't hit as hard as something was missing in the development of the characters relationships. Plot A plus plus

1.5 ⭐️
i will say it wasnt as bad as i thought it was going to be but tiktok hypes this up WAY too much. it was not amazing. wasnt even great! not even sure i could say it was good. so many parts of this felt like stolen portions of different media that was then all mashed together. a main character in a book about an island and rulers named isla crown..are you serious? and apparently she pronounces it eye-sla....girl.

alex threw SO many plot twists in towards the end it was just confusing and frustratingly hard to keep up with. Not to mention the fact that it felt like it got fairly rushed toward the end. we spent how long reading about days 1-50 and then all of a sudden the days just started flying by. not that i wanted this train wreck to go on any longer. it was actually quite boring and then everything started happening at once. it feels like she just tried to throw every trope she could think about into this book.

i love our one gay character who lost the person he loved and is sad. don't you just love when a gay character is thrown in for the purpose of suffering? i mean why make him gay at that rate, just so you can shout diversity? lets not forget i believe he also happens to be the one poc character in a book where the author claimed diversity.

the names of the realms..wildLING, sunLING, starLING, moonLING, skyLING...oh and nightshade. have some originality i beg.

and lets also discuss the fact that the main character is what like around 20? and of course both love interests are over 500 years old. of course! she has no chemistry with either of them. the one she supposedly had chemistry with erased her memory yet she still fell in love with him out of nowhere. and oro..they have NO chemistry at all. literally he saves her a few times, she saves him. boom they're in love?? okayy. whatever you say babe.

alex can go on and on about how shes a new york times bestselling author and has a movie deal all she wants but that means nothing when your book is just awful.

i also just feel like a lot of stuff about this damn island makes no sense but whatever.

i originally was going to read the second one just for the sake of knowing how it continues but now im not even sure i want to put myself through that.

Loved the concept and her writing, but there were too many predictable moments in the book and a lot of tropes.

3.25/5 stars

I just love having opinions, which is why I read this book ASAP, because you can't form a solid opinion without doing research (contrary to the beliefs of my family on Facebook). And to be honest, I was expecting to come out of this read with my very own pitchfork and burning torch. I just love the Beauty and the Beast villager aesthetic.

But do you know what (much to my dismay)? This wasn't horrible. I'm not in love with it, and a lot of the book I did hate, but like myself at age 2, there was so much potential. Will that potential also get wasted like mine did? Probably, but I'm gonna be optimistic.

Because while yes, the worldbuilding wasn't sturdy and it took almost the entire book for me to become somewhat attached the characters....and the writing was annoying at times...and there was no build up between scenes and plot points, but I expected much work. There are fantasy series that are much worse and we as a book community should be spending our energy on hating on them instead. cough Gild cough

Shout out to my boy Oro for carrying most of this book, he's the true VIP.