Book Review Thoughts: Endure by Sara B. Larson

Book: Endure by Sara B. Larson
Genre: Ya Fantasy
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

This is the third in the series which begins with Defy and continued with  Ignite.  (Links to those reviews.) I had high hopes for this book having quite enjoyed the first two, and so I expected to love it. Sadly, it fell flat for me. And maybe it's the non-reading mood I've been in, so take my response with a grain of salt, as they say.

In this book (spoilers for the first two books possible/probably, so beware) we have Alexa leaving Damian, her true love, to go and rescue Rylan, her other love (but not true love,) whom she left kidnapped by the evil Rafe at the end of the last book. This is the story of that journey, what happens to them along the way, what they find at the end of the journey, and how they rise above it all.

What they find is in fact, quite depressing and there were many moments where I thought there was no way to get out of this mess! But they do and it all ends in a final raging battle.

So, while the story overall is good and I fell in love with the characters in previous books, this book was hard for me because I suddenly didn't care and didn't feel connected and felt like nothing much was happening. (Even though I said above that they got themselves in pretty big messes, it felt like it took forever for that to happen!) And there were some pretty sad and devastating bits that I should have been really upset about, but...

I think, also, I may have been having a weird syndrome discussed by Jenny here on her blog post awhile back...that thing about being too critical when you're reading after you've been trying to do some writing yourself. (Not that I've been writing much lately either.) I don't know. I just wasn't feeling it! Ah, it was frustrating! It has literally taken me two months to read this very short book!

What's wrong with me!?

Bottom Line: An anticlimactic end to a perfect awesome fantasy series.

Other Reviews:

Sara B Larson continues to bewitch me with her craft and skill; the magical world that Damian and Alexa live in is one I’d love to be swept up in, and I consistently want to learn more about it. From The Book Cellar

The ending is bittersweet but also very uplifting. I say bittersweet because there were many, many deaths (seriously, who survived?!), but there is hope for those that survived. From The Eater of Books

it had so much action and adventure that I could hardly get a breath before it started all over again? From Addicted Readers

So yeah, Damian and Alexa is separated in the huge part of the story. Alexa is busy saving her best-friend Rylan while Damian is either preparing for a war or worrying about Alexa. If only we saw those parts, I can only imagine how stressed Damian is. From Blackplume