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1.5 stars

When I first read the synopsis of the book, I was intrigued as I saw a great potential for a rebellion-heroine-kicks-butt novel. What I got instead was vastly different.

Let me try to go over everything that I have an issue with:

1. World Building . This is an extremely important aspect of a novel that so many authors generally tend to go light on. I want to know what's happened to the world. I want to know how Silvers exist, where abilities came from, why the government and "kingdom" (and here I use the term loosely) is set up as it is. I got none of that. It's hard to understand why everything happens just because the author tells us so. I know that the treatment of Reds is unfair - but how did it come to be like that? We hear throughout the novel something along the lines of 'that's how it's always been', but as the reader, we don't know that!

2. Predictable Plot . I'm sorry, but if you really didn't know about who would betray who in the end, you weren't paying attention (or haven't read a hundred of books like this at all). It was so obvious about what would happen to these characters. Mare keeps repeating 'anyone can betray anyone' but she obviously doesn't know what she's saying. For someone who has that as their mantra, she really does trust everyone. When things just happen to fall into place, she considers herself lucky and accepts the reality instead of questioning why or how her fortune turned out so well (with not getting caught in certain plots). It just happened too perfectly too many times. Not really exciting when you can guess what's going to happen.

3. Mare Molly Barrow . Infuriating. That's possibly the only way I can describe our main 'heroine' (and again, another term I'm using loosely). She doesn't know how to think things through and she's very shallow on the surface. She has to deal with death of those close to her, but when plotting the death of the brother of the mean girl, she feels no remorse. No compassion whatsoever. When people die and she's indirectly responsible, she doesn't want to learn their names so she doesn't care about them. What the hell? Talk about a heartless hero. To have zero compassion is to be as blind as those who have chained you. Because they have no compassion for the Reds. To me, Mare is just like a Silver as she feels the same towards (and treats them the same) as the Silvers do to the Reds. To me, that isn't a leader. She just angered me. There were just so many things wrong with her that I seriously wanted to slap the silly out of her.