These divided shores – Another disappointment..

Title: These divided shores.

Author: Sara Raasch.

Format: Audiobook.

Publisher: Balzer + Bray.

Page count: 560 (14h 2min).

Release day: August 27^th 2019.

Genre: YA, fantasy.

Rating: 2.5 stars.

*This is book two in a series, read my review for book one here!*

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

As a child, she committed unforgivable acts to free Grace Loray from King Elazar of Argrid. Now Elazar’s plan to retake the island has surpassed Lu’s darkest fears: he’s holding her and his son, Ben, captive in an endlessly shifting prison, forcing them to make a weapon that will guarantee Elazar’s success. Escape is impossible—unless Lu becomes the ruthless soldier she hoped never to be again.

Vex failed to save Lu and Ben—and that torments him as much as his Shaking Sickness. With the disease worsening, Vex throws himself into the rebellion against Argrid. The remaining free armies are allied with the stream raider syndicates—and getting them to cooperate will take a strength Vex thought burned on a pyre six years ago.

Imprisoned, betrayed, and heartbroken, Ben is determined to end his father’s rampage. Watching Elazar sway the minds of Grace Loray as he did those of Argrid, Ben knows he has to play his father’s game of devotion to win this war. But how can a heretic prince defeat the Pious God?

As armies clash and magic rises, Lu, Vex, and Ben will confront their pasts . . . or lose their futures forever.

My thoughts:

What is it with disappointing sequels lately.. I feel about the same about this one as I did about the sea witch duology. Great first book, very disappointed with the sequel.

It took me around 2 hours of the audiobook to get back into the story, since there was no recap, and it has been a couple of months since I listened to book one. I was just a bit confused about who was who and what their relations where, but I got there in the end!

After I got back in the story I quite enjoyed the first half of the book. I enjoyed seeing the development in this ‘war’ and all the politics.

But after the first half, I don’t know what happened, but I really struggled picking this book back up. I really started preferring listening to music over listening to the audiobook, and for me that is a sign I’m not enjoying the book. But the thing is, I cannot point out what exactly made me not enjoy this book. I guess it was just a mix of everything, the middle part was kinda slow, I also wasn’t really caring about the characters, and that made me not really care what was happening in the ‘war’ anymore.

I really started thinking about DNF’ing this book, but for some reason I didn’t want to, I guess sometimes I still struggle with putting a book down.

In some way I’m happy I didn’t put it down, since I did quite enjoy the ending! I also did really like the writing, and I’m definitely picking up her next work, Set Fire to the Gods!

Have you read this book? What did you think?