The Reading Shelf

See more reviews and other book-related posts at The Reading Shelf.Ah, the last book in the trilogy – it’s always a little sad to reach the end. I’ll try not to include any spoilers for the first two books, but no promises, so tread carefully if you haven’t read Unearthly or Hallowed first. For those who have or don’t care, feel free to continue reading to see why I enjoyed this book and am quite sad to see Clara’s story end.Before I talk about the good things, I’ll talk about why I went with 4 stars instead of 5. For one thing, this book sometimes seemed a little slow at the beginning as Clara adjusted to college life and tried to figure out what was going on. She was trying to figure out her relationships with Christian, Tucker, Jeffrey, Angela, and Samjeeza. Clara could also be a bit judgmental of people – I don’t remember noticing any slut-shaming or anything really bad, but it did make me a little disappointed in Clara – come on, Clara, you can be a better person! I mean, I think you are a good person, but you can still be better!Other than that, I did enjoy this book. Sometimes the book could be a bit predictable – I guessed some things kind of early on, but luckily this was the type of book where I could know something that the main character didn’t yet I still enjoyed myself. And I wasn’t always right – the summary kind of messed with my head thanks to its mention of “betrayal,” so I kept deciding that someone was a traitor only to find out I was wrong (luckily).I guess we can talk about the romance now (without any spoilers, of course), since Cynthia Hand seems to (rightfully, in my opinion) have one of the few love triangles that people enjoy. I really was conflicted with it – Tucker is quite sweet, but Clara and Christian seem to work well together. Sometimes I feel like the other characters were kind of heavy-handed with their thoughts about her relationships, like Hand had taken real conversations from fans and was using her characters to voice them, but I think it also did a good job of showing why Clara is so conflicted since both choices are good. I really would have been happy with either boy, or even Clara ending up alone and empowered, so I was both happy and sad with the ending.So, overall, I was pretty happy with Hand’s conclusion to her great Unearthly trilogy. I plan on checking out anything else Hand writes in the future, which includes an angel-less contemporary book that’s coming out next year!Rating: 4 out of 5 stars