The Poppy War

I was looking forward to this book. So many rave reviews, a very high score on Good Reads, positive reactions from some booktubers I respect.

I only finished it out of stubbornness, and perhaps some misplaced hope.

The first half reads like a lot of YA fare: challenging coming of age, childish rivalries, training to become something powerful, discovery of mysterious background. A mix of somewhat interesting and boring seen it 1,000 time before.

But halfway though, the protagonist, a girl named Rin, becomes a complete idiot. Basically everything that happens from then on – all the problems Rin encounters, the deaths of various people you'd care about if they'd been written with any depth, and some truly catastrophic world events – all come down to her remarkably stupid decisions. And by the end, she's become one of the worst people in the entire world, and is not only completely unrepentant, but has a plan to do even worse.

2 stars is generous, and I'll definitely be giving the rest of the trilogy a miss. Why would I want to spend any more time with someone like Rin?