The Midnight Star Review

This is the final book in Marie Lu's The Young Elites series. It took me so long to read this one! I loved the two previous books but it just took me forever to get around to the finale. This review will have spoilers for the earlier books because that's unavoidable so read at your own risk!

Look at that gorgeous cover!

Summary: Adelina is victorious in her reign and spreading her empire one conquered nation at a time. Except as her rule spreads, so does the madness in her mind. A new danger is arising though and it creates an unlikely alliance between previous enemies. It's a fight against time.

I loved this series compared to Marie Lu's previous one, Legend. This one was much more mature and darker. It wasn't afraid to go to certain places that many authors avoid. I kept expecting it to do the cliché thing of backtracking from going so dark, which it did in some ways but not the in the boring way.

Adelina wanted revenge and she wasn't going to let anybody stand in her way. She wanted to make people suffer the way that she and the other young elites had suffered. You can't hate her for this vindictiveness, but it does become clear that she's become too cruel. I thought the balance between rooting for her while also not was done really well.

This series did not go in the way I'd expected it to. Legend was kind of blah for me, but this series was amazing for Marie Lu and for the YA genre. It's different which allows you to be surprised throughout it. The characters are complex and diverse. It's a really rich world and I would still like to know more about it.

My only complaint was that I felt like this book could've been longer. I wanted more details about certain things and so it felt a bit rushed. They were lucky that one of the characters could basically guess what the danger was and automatically knew where to go to stop it. It worked out too easily in this aspect. The journey could've gone on for much longer than it did and with more trial and error.

This series is a high recommend from me as it's one of the first that kept surprising me. Her first series wasn't for me, but I loved The Young Elites. Now she's coming out with a series called Warcross. It's sci-fi and video games which is different and not what I'm typically into but I'll give it a try. I'm impressed with Marie Lu because it's obvious that she can write a wide variety of genres and be successful.

I was satisfied with how this series ended and would suggest it to anybody who likes high fantasy that's a little darker than the typical.

5 out of 5 stars!