Torn (A Wicked Saga #2)
Published on July 19, 2016 by Jennifer L. Armentrout.
Links: Goodreads.
Source: purchased for Kindle.
Genre: paranormal NA romance.
Torn between duty and survival, nothing can be the same. Everything Ivy Morgan thought she knew has been turned on its head. After being betrayed and then nearly killed by the Prince of the Fae, she’s left bruised and devastated—and with an earth-shattering secret that she must keep at all costs. And if the Order finds out her secret, they’ll kill her.
Everything Ivy Morgan thought she knew has been turned on its head. After being betrayed and then nearly killed by the Prince of the Fae, she’s left bruised and devastated—and with an earth-shattering secret that she must keep at all costs. And if the Order finds out her secret, they’ll kill her. Then there’s Ren Owens, the sexy, tattooed Elite member of the Order who has been sharing Ivy’s bed and claiming her heart. Their chemistry is smoking hot, but Ivy knows that Ren has always valued his duty to the Order above all else—he could never touch her if he knew the truth. That is, if he let her live at all. Yet how can she live with herself if she lies to him?
Then there’s Ren Owens, the sexy, tattooed Elite member of the Order who has been sharing Ivy’s bed and claiming her heart. Their chemistry is smoking hot, but Ivy knows that Ren has always valued his duty to the Order above all else—he could never touch her if he knew the truth. That is, if he let her live at all. Yet how can she live with herself if she lies to him? But as the Fae Prince begins to close in, intent on permanently opening the gates to the Otherworld, Ivy is running out of options. If she doesn’t figure out who she can trust—and fast—it’s not only her heart that will be torn apart, but civilization itself.
This is the review for the second part of A Wicked Saga, so there will definitely be some spoilers for the first book of the series. If you’re new to it, you can start by reading my notes on Wicked (it’s not exactly a review, but yeah).
I buddy-read Torn with Becky and Danya, which was my first experience of the kind and I enjoyed it A LOT. We read it in three relatively equal parts (first 10 chapters, then the next 10, then a sprint to the end) and vented after each one. Their comments made me snort-laugh, so you’d better go check out their reviews here and here!
So. Torn. I am in two minds about this book. I would have given it an even lower rating if it wasn’t for its readability and my weakness for Armentrout’s writing. I flew through each of the thirds and liked the tempo if nothing else. However, it’s also a pretty horrible book. If someone told me this was where the story would go, I honestly wouldn’t have started the series. That’s how annoyed I was.
The first issue I have is with Ivy. We find out she’s a halfling (half human, half fae) at the end of Wicked. This means that the fae prince will want to make a baby with her in order to open the gates to the Otherworld, allowing all the nasty fae to swarm into the human realm and take over. I was not okay with this “a woman’s womb is the possible source of the apocalypse” plotline, and I was even less impressed by how Armentrout dealt with it. I mean, I never expected Armentrout to write a feminist story but this was just plain awful.
There are several instances where Ivy is nearly raped, threatened with rape, and drugged by the prince and forced to do things she never would have done otherwise. AGAIN, I know some authors can write about such delicate issues and master them beautifully, however, Armentrout is not such a writer. She has Ivy feeling ashamed for her actions, even though she keeps telling herself she did nothing wrong, and feeling guilty, too. That is appalling. Okay. I’m changing my rating (from 2.5 hearts). This is pissing me off too much even as I write.
Ivy is also so damn cliché when it comes to her personal image. When she’s not thinking that she’s an abomination because she is half-fae (yawn), she’s thinking that she isn’t hot enough for Ren – because he is gorgeous and she is just this special, milk-skinned redhead that no one would look at twice. *facepalm*
Another problem I had was with Ren. The guy was really hot in Wicked and even though he subscribed to the Order’s weird mentality (they killed two innocent people in this part, for example, because their daughter was suspected of being a halfling – she wasn’t, so they were killed for nothing), he was strong and confident and, well, kind of mouth-watering. In Torn, however, he starts off by being an overprotective jackass and steadily progresses into being a controlling, judgmental asshole. Why this change? I have no idea, especially as he’s somewhat redeemed at the end of the book. But I can’t reconcile this last-chapter Ren with the unreasonable guy we meet in the first half of the book. I usually read Armentrout’s books for a good amount of sass and sex and now I couldn’t even enjoy those. Meh.
Armentrout also did a fantastic job of isolating Ivy from all her friends. She even can’t trust Tink properly now that he’s a man-sized brownie, not a tiny winged creature anymore (yeah, that happened…). There are also no significant women left around her – and unless one fae lady who helped her and another human one become much more prominent characters in the third book, Ivy is going to be the only woman around. Also, Armentrout calls women “females”. I just… wow.
Oh! Oh! And Ivy makes a deal that … wait, that’s a spoiler. *spoiler in white* Anyway, she makes a deal with the prince that goes like this: he will release Ren, who has been captured, beaten, and fed on, if she willingly submits to the prince in three weeks – aka sleeps with him in order to make the door-making baby. And she agrees to the deal because a) she feels guilty about Ren being captured, even though we later find out he’d been an asshole and went fae hunting without being ready; b) she doesn’t feel good enough because she’s a halfling anyway, and c) muses that she could still kill herself before sleeping with the prince if she doesn’t manage to escape in time. SHOOT. ME. NOW. *end spoiler* Okay, I feel better now.
I’m not even sure I’ll be reading the third part. Probably not, even though I’m on a mission to finish more series (doing… poorly) and I want to know if Armentrout is capable of redeeming herself. I kind of thought Torn might be the final part but I saw that we have one more book to go (or so it seems now). I was also shocked to see that Torn has a 4,3 rating on Goodreads! Were we even reading the same book?! I don’t think I’ll be picking up her next series, whatever it is, so this might just be the final goodbye. It’s sad and harsh but there are just so many better books out there.
Have you read Wicked and/or Torn? What did you think?
Do you have any good paranormal recs for me?
I’d love to hear from you! :)
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