BY SOPHIA
Ah, April. This month there were so many things to celebrate and we spent a good chunk of our podcast girl chat discussing all the fun things we did in the month of April (especially considering how depressing last April was, we both felt like we had some make-up celebrating to do). We gabbed about Jensine’s birthday, our girls’ weekend away, and ALL THE THOUGHTS on the tv show Shadow & Bone on Netflix.
For our book club pick, we continued in the Grishverse theme and moved onto the Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom duology by Leigh Bardugo. This series was also another re-read for both of us but for one of us it almost felt like a first-time read because she may or may not have forgotten everything. Spoilers coming ahead so if you haven’t read the books yet and plan to, you may want to stop reading this post now 😉
overall rating: 4/5
what we liked:
- The heist is SO meticulously detailed and planned out .. we LOVE a good heist story, and this one did not disappoint. Kaz & his crew are masters at their craft and it was so fun to see their shenanigans as they went about trying to complete their job (think: Oceans 11 vibes).
- There were a few cameo appearances from Shadow & Bone characters in Crooked Kingdom (Genya, Zoya, Nikolai …) and it was so fun to see how the characters in the two separate series were connected.
what we disliked:
- The characters weren’t, in our opinion, given as much depth as the characters in Shadow & Bone. You still felt like you knew them and rooted for them but I think there could have been more done by Bardugo to give the reader a bigger glimpse into each of their back stories.
- The ending was somewhat open-ended. It wasn’t as final and “and they ALL lived happily ever after!” as the Shadow & Bone series and we’d prefer a story that truly had some closure for all the characters.
- Matthias dies. The end. (WHY!!!!!!!!) If we’re honest, him dying is the sole reason why our rating was knocked off an entire star. *insert sobs*
in conclusion:
It was a FUN story – truly just FUN. We both loved how even when it seemed like Kaz’s crew is getting bested, in the end it turns out that he has planned for every contingency. If you like heist/underdog stories, you’ll like this one a lot.
Also, in keeping with the Grishaverse books, our book club picks for the month of MAY will be … *drumroll* King of Scars & Rule of Wolves (Nikolai stories) by Leigh Bardugo! We can’t WAIT!