Review: Eden Conquered - Joelle Charbonneau

Eden Conquered by Joelle Charbonneau
Series: Dividing Eden #2
My rating: {★★★☆☆}

YA Fantasy
Expected publication: June 5th 2018 by HarperTeen

Source: ARC received from Harper via Edelweiss

The electrifying conclusion to the Dividing Eden series by the New York Times bestselling author of the Testing trilogy, Joelle Charbonneau..

The Trials of Virtuous Succession have ended. Prince Andreus is king—and Princess Carys is dead.

But even as he’s haunted by what he did to win the throne, Andreus discovers that his dream of ruling only brings new problems. The people love his twin even more in death than they did when she was alive. The Elders treat him as a figurehead. And worst of all, the winds of Eden are faltering.

But despite what everyone believes, Carys is alive. Exiled to the wilderness, Carys struggles to control the powers that have broken free inside her. And as she grows stronger, so does her conviction that she must return to the Palace of Winds, face her twin and root out the treachery that began long before the first Trials started.

The Kingdom of Eden is growing darker with each passing day. Brother and sister, former foes, must decide whether some betrayals cut too deep to be forgiven—and whether one will wear the crown or both will lose everything.

** I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. **

I read and reviewed the first book in this series, Dividing Eden and while I didn't love it I was excited for this, the sequel and final book in the duology. While in a lot of aspects there was improvement (e.g. the world building became clearer and easier to understand) I was still left somewhat disappointed with this series.

I felt like the characters became a little more relateable and yet they still fell flat for me. The character interactions were weak and after the setup of the first book I just felt that very little was done to build on the characters and their development and once character in particular seemed to almost do a 180 in terms of from the first book to the second which I found too unrealistic and the motivations too feeble.

The writing was far too expository and I felt like I was just getting detail after detail after detail without being left to be able to decide anything for myself which then caused a lot of the court intrigues and politics to become bland and a plot twist to lose it's effect because every little element was just over explained. Yes, it is nice that the author had thought of these things in the first place, but as readers we need to be given credit that we can figure some things out for ourselves and that makes the enjoyment of reading far sweeter.

Overall it was unfortunate that this series just wasn't for me and the pros weren't strong enough to carry both books and I was left, again, feeling underwhelmed.