As Kami Glass and her friends continue to battle the sorcerers of the Lynburn family in the sleepy English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, friendships and families are torn apart.
Rating: ★★★★☆ – really liked it
Genre: young adult fiction, ya mystery, paranormal fantasy
Pros: queer rep, more banter!, funny
Cons: love triangle (ish), occasionally choppy narrative
A lot of the things I would talk about in a review for Untold are things I already talked about in my review of the first book, Unspoken. To avoid being repetitive I will skip those and advise you to read that review, then move on to Untold-specific things:
Untold is one of the better sequels I’ve read in a while. It didn’t fall into the traps a lot of “middle of a trilogy” books fall into.
We get more insight into the personalities of several characters that we didn’t get in the first book. This is done through a ton of POV switching (Unspoken switched between Jared & Kami, Untold goes much farther than that). This can sometimes make the narrative feel a little choppy, but overall I think it’s good for the story.
Almost everyone got a little character development. Kami has to learn to cope with things on her own, Holly must learn to accept who she is, Jared learns to care about other people and let them in, just to list a few. Even the adults got some moments of development.
I’ve never read a book with such a strong ensemble of characters, and I’m not sure how I can go back to reading books where background characters are 2-dimensional plot devices now that I’ve found Sarah Rees Brennan’s novels.
I want to take a minute to talk about the queer representation in the novel, because something happened that you so rarely see. We already have the character whose sexuality we discovered in the first book, and that gets developed a bit. Turns out she knew and accepted that she was a lesbian, but wasn’t quite ready for other people to know. Then we get another character who is unsure of her own sexual identity because she knows she likes boys and now is shocked to discover an attraction to another girl. She discusses this with another character and this is where I braced myself for the inevitable “you can just like people, not labels” or some other such copout. But instead he openly discusses bisexuality with her. He even says the word “bisexual”! For some people this probably seems like a small thing to be so excited about, but being bisexual myself, and constantly seeing media refuse to acknowledge it even when they have bisexual characters, this scene was very important to me and utterly refreshing.
The plot feels a little slower paced than the first book, but I think this is mostly due to the fact that there is less suspense and mystery. Instead of finding bodies and trying to figure out who the bad guys are, the group are preparing for a showdown. There is still some mystery and there’s a big confrontation at the end like the first novel, but most of the book is about planning and preparing. Luckily, the book is well-written and there is enough going on the keep the reader interested despite the somewhat slower plot.
On the whole, Untold is an excellent bridge between the first novel and the third. The reader ends up just as invested in the main plot arc as in the first novel and more invested in the characters, which is exactly what a second book needs to do to move a trilogy along. It’s an easy read with enough substance not to be considered fluff.
In addition to those who enjoyed the first novel, Unspoken, I recommend Untold to fans of ya romance, paranormal fantasy, and novels with strong characterization.
Spoiler Zone
I mentioned in my review of Unspoken that there was something about the first book that left me angry and that I hoped would be resolved in the sequel. It was! If you are someone who found yourself angry at Jared’s character in the end of the first book and you aren’t sure if you want to read Untold because of that, this spoiler is for you!
[start] We learn that Jared lashed out at Kami because of what she said before she broke the link and his belief that she wanted nothing to do with him. Her avoiding him afterwards (because she believed what he said) confirmed for Jared that she must hate him so he tried to maintain a distance from her, partially because of his hurt feelings and partially because he believed it’s what she wanted. [end]
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