Behind the Pages

I’m starting to kick myself because of reading this ARC. Now I’ll have to wait I don’t know how long until the next book that I am dying to read! The horrid but always so seducing cliff hanger is used at the end of this book that I really am in agony for the next novel... Like Snyder’s other works, her writing style and story plots never cease to keep us enticed, and for book number nine, it doesn’t disappoint.

Throughout half of the story, we don’t really hear much about the lilies. It is until most occurrences start leading back to the lilies that we try and put the pieces together with what information we have recently learnt about the lilies. What did surprise me mostly was in the very end about the peace lily, this basically leads the cliff hanger for the next novel as we want to find out what the lilies can actually do as well as their major role in this world.

We can already tell that Avry is cocky and is planning something or is just running on her luck in chapter 1. We also can tell that she is compassionate as she does not deny anything said about her as well as regret healing Fawn as well as her weakness over children.

Already questions about their land seem to come forth, such as, what are peace and death lilies? Although our questions get answered sooner as we progress through the book. The novel moves quickly and we hunger to see what comes next and devour the words, we quickly become part of the world and, along with Avery, discover new things as well as basic things that have been happening in the land for the past three years that get us up to speed with the other characters so that we can get straight into the story without too much confusion, as our earlier questions fade from this sudden realisation and knowledge, although some questions linger, they are later addressed.

Their world is like a combination of our modern day world, with that Snyder’s usual kind of world that she’s used in both Study and Glass series’. New mixes of our modern day functions as well as past, simple functions are used in this novel that makes it seem like a quicker and newer transformation between old and new. Although some seems strange in the past simple world with the modern additions for example, hair dye..But these thoughts are quickly abolished as we move our train of thought through the novel and start to wonder about the more pressing matters at hand.

Kerrick. Of course there’s a knight in shining armour to sweep us off our feet. More like forest knight though. We can tell that he is contradicting himself when he tells Avry that the men and the journey has changed only because of her being there and what she is doing to make the journey abnormal to Kerrick and the men’s usual manner Although he first comes across as rotten, uninterested in mediocre things, and stubborn we still are torn in half with him. On one side, we see his aggression and stubbornness that rocks us and makes us wonder who he thinks he is and as to what made him that way. On the other side, we see him opening up and his iced-over heart starting to form cracks. He doesn’t yet realise that he is changing as well. Even from little into the novel (100+ pages) we can see the change in Kerrick’s attitude towards Avry and we wonder where it might lead. Loved the end, although all the love was given to us in one whole chunk, it doesn’t seem to overload us as the book was constantly in the action and we don’t think much about love (until Avry thinks about Kerrick and we start swooning).

What is the truth in this world? Every story told about someone or something is either the truth or a lie. Words used to mask the truth and to make it seem better than what it really is. What this brings us to is our wonder over what is actually true. We want to know more about Rhyne and the real reason as to why Avry won’t heal him. Even Tohorn’s stories, we don’t know what to believe. Some bits and pieces match together of different stories but manipulation is key here in order to win people over that are seen as a threat or are important to their plans. This novel is full of these kind of stories but the manipulation game works a charm, thus, making us more focused on trying to figure out their plans and what is true, than to think of what will come next in the story. This was a brilliant way to altogether miss the stages of “thought predictability” throughout the novel as we were constantly thinking about other features in the novel that have happened previously in the novel as well as in the present.