BOOK REVIEW FOR "THE SHADOWS BETWEEN US" BY TRICIA LEVENSELLER

Note: This review is spoiler free (spoilers are all marked and have warnings)!
Book: The Shadows Between Us
Author: Tricia Levenseller
Genre: Fantasy
Age: For readers 14 and up 
Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Synopsis: Alessandra is tired of being overlooked, but she has a plan to gain power:
1) Woo the Shadow King.
2) Marry him.
3) Kill him and take his kingdom for herself.

Now doesn’t that synopsis just sound amazing! Yah well it did, but it turns out the synopsis was the only good part of this entire book. 
Meh. That is what I have to say about this book. Completely and overwhelmingly meh. I mean the characters were flat, the storyline was cliche, the worldbuilding was nonexistent and it was just so boring and predictable!

I wanted to like this book, I really did but it just was such..... a huge mess. Where’s the flavor? Where’s the villain? Where’s the action?. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Not every story needs to be a fantasy style action packed novel” and I agree but... this book was literally marketed as a fantasy plotline with Slytherin type characters?!? And don’t get me started on the “Slytherin” characters.

What I didn’t Like:  

1. Flat Characters: 
   

• Ok this was a huge reason why this book just didn’t do it for me. The characters are SO underdeveloped, meaning we get no backstory on them on why Alessandra is the way she is. I mean, believe it or not, but people aren’t just born with the diabolical idea of taking over an entire kingdom. We get a few hints that she’s like this because of her neglecting dad and her sister, which she hates (we were never given a reason on why she hates her sister). But we never really got a full story on how her sister treated her badly or how Alessandra suffered years of neglect. It would have made such a BIG difference if we had just gotten a few flashbacks in Alessandra’s childhood of how poorly she was treated and how she then grew up bitter with a plan to prove her dad and sister wrong. Oh and her mom? She’s frickin DEAD and we get like two mentions about her! 
  

• Next we have Kallias…. WHO LET ME THINK THAT HE WAS GOING TO BE SOME HOT TOXIC BOY? He literally has the personality of a rock. Actually, even rocks can be more interesting than this Kallias dude, so I take that back. Really, what did Kallias contribute to the story? He’s a horrible king who has to rely on Alessandra’s wise (more like obvious and mediocre) ideas to solve his own kingdom’s problems. He’s also clearly stupid (him and Alessandra) because I knew from a mile away who the villains were. 
  2. The Plot: Hey guys, I need some help. I searched high and low but couldn’t find the plot to this story! If anyone even has an inkling as to what happened in this book, please tell me because I have no clue! In all seriousness, I finished this book last week and already forgot like half the plot because THERE IS NONE! The whole book is Alessandra just living in the castle, gossiping with her friends and frollicking through the castle’s gardens. This is like the Selection but a hundred times worse (and I actually liked the Selection because it had a good romance, which this book lacks but more on that later). Literally the only good part about this book was that it was so short. I could not have handled more than 300 pages of this uneventful story. 
  3. The Inconsistencies and Unrealisticness (Contains very minor spoilers that aren’t important to the story): 
  
• The Father character: A huge inconsistency with this character! At the beginning, we are introduced to this character as a more power hungry guy who wants to marry off his daughters to rich and wealthy men. But then halfway through the father switches majorly. While Alessandra is “wooing” the king, her father keeps telling her to stop trying to win the king over and to settle for a mere lord. What?? The power hungry father we see at the beginning would have never said this but would have done everything he could to get Alessandra to marry the king so he could benefit off of that. Instead her father came several times to the castle asking Alessandra to just marry a lord. This made no sense whatsoever for the father character. 
  
• During the wrestling match Alessandra went to, she placed a bet on the smaller man. Then during the wrestling match, she, as an AUDIENCE member, went to go give tips to the wrestler. She literally gave away tricks and told the wrestler where to place his punches and the weak spots on the other wrestler. Huh??? What kind of wrestling place allows the audience members to intervene, give the wrestler tips and call it a fair match? 
  
• Another unrealistic part of this book are how dumb the villains are. SPOILERS: On page 181, when someone stabbed Kallias, they just assumed he was dead. They also then saw Alessandra lying on the ground and she said “Go, you killed him, go before the guards get you” and then the villain is dumb enough to believe her, just leave her on the ground instead of stabbing her too and then walks away. That gives Alessandra a chance to stab him back. Literally a villain should not be THIS dumb to just leave the two of them there and believe Alessandra’s words.
  4. World Building? Haven’t heard of her: I don’t even remember the name of this kingdom. It was probably mentioned like once. Anyways, where is the world building? Was it on vacation? It must have been on vacation, because it obviously wasn’t present in this book. Nothing is explained in this book about how the kingdom works or anything. Then at some points in the book they throw around some words pertaining to their world that I have no clue what they’re talking about.
  5. Super Predictable (SPOILERS skip this paragraph): I saw the Leandros thing from a MILE away (though I didn’t guess about it being Xanthos, so I’ll give the author credit on that brilliant plot twist). The Vasco thing? Was that supposed to be a surprise? I genuinely thought it was obvious from the second encounter we had with him. On page 113, Vasco says to Alessandra: “Now is the perfect opportunity to rely on us to run the kingdom for him while he spends his time with a beautiful young lady such as yourself”. I don’t know if Alessandra’s brain went on vacation along with the world building, or something but SHE CLEARLY WASN”T THINKING. Vasco literally just confessed to wanting to run the kingdom and Alessandra doesn’t even bat an eye. Tell me, read that quote and tell me you did not see Vasco being the villain from a MILE away!
  6. Alessandra’s “Wisdom”: 
  
• Sure, this girl’s ideas were clever but they were ones that could have been made by anyone. I’m surprised no one else on the council thought of the classic bait and catch plan to catch the bandit. It’s such an obvious method to catch a thief that it’s alarming that Alessandra had to be the first one to say the idea instead of the supposedly “smart” king and council. 
  
• When Alessandra goes to see the wrestling matches for the first time, she prides herself on being able to place super smart bets and constantly winning. Yah, her “clever” observations could be made by anyone. On the first match, she observed that the champion wrestler was already wrestling so much, he must have been tired. She then placed a bet on the smaller one. See, this observation could have been made by anyone and the people she was placing bets with are people who are experts at this wrestling business. Surely they would also notice something as easy to notice as heavy breathing from the champion wrestler? But no, somehow Alessandra manages to win this bet and the next twenty or so. 
  7. Missed Opportunity with Hector (SPOILERS skip paragraph):
  
•  “They’ve never found the body of the first and only boy who broke my heart. And they never will.” So much for that huh? Guess they did eventually find his body, but you know what, it doesn’t even matter because it made NO change to the plot. The buildup to Hector’s investigation being reopened was actually kind of interesting but then it was all dropped suddenly. There was so much the author could have done with this plotpoint! Instead she just wrote that Kallias laughed at Alessandra when she got accused and then he just dismissed the murder case. And that was that. ???? Huh. Well, ok then. I guess instead of pursuing a more interesting plot line of Hector’s murder we can go back to the plotline where Alessandra gossips with her friends and frollicks through the castle gardens once more.
  8. Romance: BLAND! This was not a enemies to lovers romance. Kallias didn’t even think of Alessandra as an enemy. Instead, it was like instant love for him. He saw her at a ball once and BAM, he wants her to live in the castle. Next thing you know they want to get married. This was not the enemies to lovers romance I was promised. Thank you, next. 
  

What I Liked: 

1. The First Line: Now that line was awesome! “They’ve never found the body of the first and only boy who broke my heart. And they never will.” YESSS MUAHAHA perfectly devious and awesome! Just what I signed up for. If only that awesomeness carried into the rest of the book. 
   
2. The Book Was Short: This is a good lightread novel if you just want to escape the nonstop 600+ page fantasy books. 
   

And that’s about it! Sorry to those who really liked this book, I respect your opinion but this one just wasn’t for me!

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