Here comes unpopular, booed review which will earn me a special throne at the minority kingdom. A promising YV fantasy/sci-fi, super heroes against the dark one and victory and its aftermath story from the brilliant author of Divergent franchise! So nothing can be wrong!

I cannot say I hate this book but I pushed so hard to finish it. I puffed, I sighed, I screamed and close the book, I napped, I had so many happy hour times (actually when you’re in quarantine, every hour or half an hour could make you happy! You know what I mean! Cheers!) and I fidgeted, squirmed, walked back and forth a lot. At some point finishing it turned into a mission, a task , a mandatory thing like producing hand sanitizer at your home or working on your dancing moves to burn the calories you got at your 15 times happy hours drinking.

Positive things: I liked the first part: We’re introduced to our five main characters: chosen ones who has defeated the Dark one when they were only kids and gathering together for tenth anniversary!

Sloane is the tough, badass, cool, smart, hiding behind emotional barriers, traumatized because she was one of the two kids who has been captivated by Dark One! I wish the story may have been told by her narration. It will help us to connect with the protagonist more and it could give more intimate perspective to her fight with her inner demons, her struggles to adapt in daily lives.

Sloane, Inez and Albie were my favorite characters from five chosen ones but unfortunately we say goodbye to one of them who was suffering from PTSD and drug addiction and other one got stuck in her universe.

I find Esther and Matt a little pretentious, artificial and unoriginal. Matt was the leader of the group but more than leading, he acted like popular celebrity who has great thirst for fame and spotlight and Esther was not different from her with her social media and over sharing obsession. And third person narration didn’t help us to connect with them, too.

Other irritating thing was at most part of the books characters acted, talked and behaved like teenagers but this was normal because their teenage years have been stolen and they carried a huge burden and responsibility on their shoulders which prevented them growing up like their peers have done.

I think Mox and Ziva were the other likable, badass, complex characters of the book but because of the progression of story, we couldn’t be introduced to them till the half part of the book.

Negative things: I already told about my feelings about some of the characters. I think my main problem was too slow pacing. At some parts I wanted to scream at the author to omit some parts and cut to the chase.

First part of the story: the characters’ adapting in real live after ten years later they defeated the Dark One! But did they really defeat him because his corpse has never been found?

Sloane suffers from nightmares and panic attacks, using tranquilizers. Albie mostly spends his time in Rehab because he was the other one who has been captivated and tortured by Dark One. He already lost sense of touch in his fingers! Inez turned into some kind of agoraphobic. But Matt and Esther adapts in their new lives by pretending and living a perfectly fake social media lives.

The night of tenth anniversary, Matt proposes Sloane in front of a huge audience and Sloane reluctantly says yes because she doesn’t want to humiliate her long-time boyfriend in front of his fans! Then one of them couldn’t take anymore, getting exhausted to fight against the suffering and pain, killing himself.

At the funeral ceremony, something happened and Matt, Esther and Sloane find themselves kidnapped by powerful people at the parallel universe which is the beginning of second part of the book: They have been summoned because there is another Dark One at this universe and they’re chosen to fight against him and if they don’t kill him, they will never go back to their own universes. And… that’s where I stopped telling what’s gonna happen!

But I have to admit: I liked the parallel universe’s characters more. Including Dark One and his soldiers, oh, let’s not forget the Prophet!
The ending was great and but I wish there might be more tempting cliffhanger make me wanna read the second installment. But I really liked Mox and Sloane and I’m so sure, this book was the just the introduction and I hope the author left the juiciest action packed and faster paced story-line for the second book. I still want to read it!

Overall: Ultra slow paced and boring third narration story-telling made me give 3.25 stars but I still think this was interestingly promising start and I still want to read the second installment because I’m still die-hard fan of this author’s works and as I witnessed before her second installments are always getting better than the first ones.