Goodreads synopsis
After a brutal nuclear war, the United States was left decimated. A small group of survivors eventually banded together, but only after more conflict over which family would govern the new nation. The Westfalls lost. Fifty years later, peace and control are maintained by marrying the daughters of the losing side to the sons of the winning group in a yearly ritual.
This year, it is my turn.
My name is Ivy Westfall, and my mission is simple: to kill the president’s son—my soon-to-be husband—and restore the Westfall family to power.
But Bishop Lattimer is either a very skilled actor or he’s not the cruel, heartless boy my family warned me to expect. He might even be the one person in this world who truly understands me. But there is no escape from my fate. I am the only one who can restore the Westfall legacy.
Because Bishop must die. And I must be the one to kill him…
Review
I give ★★★★★
Let me just say, this was an amazing book.
A lot of comments are just running around my mind right now but let me just say:
Ivy is such a great protagonist, she's just like arghh I don't know how to put it into words!
“I want to be someone strong and brave enough to make hard choices. But I want to be fair and loving enough to make the right ones.”
Okay, so something happened to her mom. Her sister, her dad and herself, Ivy, have a plan in motion: to marry the president's son and kill him. Kill the boy, no matter what for her dad to take over because the president's rules discourage freedom, and more importantly, punishment means throwing civilians over the fence. What happens over the fence? We don't know. We know it's dangerous but nobody who went there ever came back. THIS I LIKE.
She was raised for this, she was raised and trained to kill Bishop, the man she has to marry, or rather "boy" because he's only... what? 18? Despite the fact that he seems a lot mature. But the person who was supposed to marry him was her sister, which makes it even greater. I love the fact that it's not all happy family, bla bla it's family first bla bla, the kind of stuff you see everywhere. It was more of a "I should listen to my guts and not my family," sort of thing. I liked that even though she was doubting the whole plan, she still went through the steps, like she found no reason to stop. She explained each step, and us, the readers, understand what she had to do, but what we understood most were her doubts. She questioned his character throughout the whole book, and never quite let her guard down. But he is not like his dad!!
Bishop is such a nice, intelligent character. Okay "nice" doesn't say much, but he's so nice, like person-wise, like doing the right thing and all that. But then with the neighbors, he didn't take direct action to "fix" the problem (trying so hard not to spoil) and they get into these arguments which just fires up their relationship and makes them so "couple-like" and I think this book is too great and it finished too fast.
What I liked about the beginning was that it got straight to the point. That marriage. And the ending was just too much for me to handle, but I love love love cliffhangers that just overwhelm me. This book has a good cliffhanger, I'm telling you, it's perfect.
Okay okay, enough with the goody goody, I'll admit this book lacks a bit of chemistry between them but for people who have just met, the slow pace is the right pace.
It's a shame I finished this book so fast, my eyes could not leave the pages. There's a lot but too little on Ivy and Bishop's relationship. The author set this idea in our head that Bishop had to die so the good guys win. We anticipated that Ivy wouldn't go through with it, yet this book, as predictable as it seemed, still managed to surprise me.
We got the fact that he was a good guy, but we knew so little, Ivy knew so little. Bishop kept leaving and sort of just disappearing. His intentions were mysterious, and we don't even know how much the guy knows or if he was surprised or suspicious about Ivy towards the end.
SPOILER ALERT!
What Ivy wasn't trained to do was pretend she was happy with him, or the least affectionate and that was a problem we witnessed she was struggling with due to the lack of warmth and tenderness coming from her sister and father. Especially the father, since he seemed to be the most important figure she looked up to. She was trained to stay loyal to their plan however her own instincts became an obstacle as predicted, what surprised me was the fact that her family didn't show any signs of attempting to save her in the end, even if she could've easily betrayed them in a worst possible way. Despite the fact that they were the one who manipulated her into going through the plan blindly with missing facts about what had really happened with her mother.
I found the reasons behind her father's takeover rather foolish, when the king had absolute no control over what happened.
Ivy is a loyal, determined, and impulsive protagonist, definitely the right characteristics for her role in this dystopian world of conflict. Which might make Bishop the antagonist, who is reserved, calculated and definitely patient.
The world they lived in lacked the details we needed to imagine, but it the small bits we got on how the houses looked and the fence were enough to provide us with information that would help create their world. It was simple, and I suppose the focus was more on the characters rather than the world they lived in.
I understood Ivy's reasons for doubting the plan and for making the decisions she made. It felt like her reaction to everything was carefully expressed and she's a wise protagonist. I was really happy with everything. I was pained to see how Bishop kept thinking she was better than that, even when she showed him no reason to believe she was otherwise. She held her emotions carefully despite how painful it was. No character deserves to pick who to betray, and even though her actions may have made it seem like she was betraying Bishop, I wouldn't have thought of a better decision. More importantly, there's a whole new thing To look forward to, it's not just a moment, but a whole new world. I am beyond excited for the next book!
This series has so much hope.
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