Reading With Tyler

Name: Reckless
Series: The Powerless Trilogy #2
Author: Lauren Roberts
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s UK
Format: Paperback
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Noted Tropes: Lovers to Enemies, Love Triangle
Steam or Spice: Steam-ish

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Review:

Reckless is book 2 in The Powerless Trilogy and so there may be spoilers for Powerless in the review below.

I have to start with the elephant in the room, and that’s the ending. I hated it. Not in a ‘I won’t read book 3’ kind of hate, but rather a I hate the ending. I need to slap a brother because I cannot deal with the ending of Reckless.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the rest of the book. Reckless picks up where Powerless left off. Pae is on the run after killing the King and Kitt has sent his brother out looking for her with the task to bring her back to him. Kai, now the new King’s (Kitt) Enforcer, is having to fight his heart while he chases the girl who murdered his father. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel going into Reckless because it felt like either we were going to have a whole book of Pae on the run, or she would be captured quickly and the whole being on the run aspect would have felt wasted? In the end, Roberts went with a bit of a mix and it worked for the most part.

Kai and Pae had a lot of moments together in Reckless where you as the reader are just screaming inside because you know damn well they’d have been a cute couple if Pae hadn’t done the bad thing. And yet we have banter, fighting, stabbing, kissing… it’s all there. Everything we’d come to love about Kai and Pae in Powerless, remains, despite the clear dynamic changes. I liked that, a lot.

Kitt on the other hand seems to just be spiralling out of control – which is unspurprising given that he actually liked his father. And yet, it’s annoying. I really liked Kitt in Powerless, but I found him and his chapters to be annoying in Reckless. It’s a shame, especially given that I think he’s probably going to continue to have POV chapters in book three…

The book receives a 4 star rating because in reality I didn’t feel like there was much plot movement in this book. I do think Lauren Roberts is setting up for something in book three, and that has me excited, but book two just didn’t really do much for the plot. Additionally, as I mentioned, I’m not a fan of the ending. It isn’t awful, I just don’t like it – it’s hard to explain why without giving it away, and perhaps not everyone would be as bothered by the ending as I am – but a few of the Goodreads reviews assure me I am not alone with my opinion!

I will read book 3, whenever that is out, and I do intend to read Powerful (which I believe is a prequel .5 book – not about Pae!) but I wouldn’t be rushing to grab them if I had them already. All in all, I still love our main characters, we didn’t get much page time with our secondary characters (I miss Gail too! Though she’s probably considered a background character not a secondary!) but the plot didn’t move anywhere and the ending was a sad fact for me.

“I think I would fall on my sword if it meant you mourned me,” he breathes. “And it’s terrifying to think you hold that much power over me.”