{Review} Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan

Untold (The Lynburn Legacy #2)

Sarah Rees Brennan

Pages: 370

Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers

Format: Hardcover

Age Group: YA

Date Published: September 24, 2013

 It's time to choose sides....On the surface, Sorry-in-the-Vale is a sleepy English town. But Kami Glass knows the truth. Sorry-in-the-Vale is full of magic. In the old days, the Lynburn family ruled with fear, terrifying the people into submission in order to kill for blood and power. Now the Lynburns are back, and Rob Lynburn is gathering sorcerers so that the town can return to the old ways.But Rob and his followers aren’t the only sorcerers in town. A decision must be made: pay the blood sacrifice, or fight. For Kami, this means more than just choosing between good and evil. With her link to Jared Lynburn severed, she’s now free to love anyone she chooses. But who should that be?A darkly humorous take on Gothic romance, Sarah Rees Brennan's Lynburn Legacy weaves together the tale of a heroine desperate to protect those she loves, two boys hoping to be saved, and the magical forces that will shape their destiny.

Holy angsty sorcerers, Batman! Untold brought down a rain of feels from the heavens of YA literature. But, this was to be expected, considering the evil ending of Unspoken. Untold made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me bring the book to school and read passages aloud to unsuspecting bystanders. The Lynburn Legacy is the type of series that you want to share. The characters, the plot, the world all beg to be discussed. I loved Untold (even though it took me like 3 weeks to finish it, but more on that later).

I should have expected my heart to be torn apart and dragged through the mud when I started this book. But, I'm not one to really think about things before I do them, and it caught me by surprise. I am a diehard t Jami shipper, and Unspoken set up for that relationship to be feelsy. Kami and Jared are dealing with each other being real still, but now they have to get over their seperate feelings of betrayal that the occurrances at the end of the first book caused. I thought the way SRB wrote their individual struggles with being individuals for the first time in their lives was strangely realistic. Because, even though there haven't been any documented cases of kids mentally joined together in the womb, their reactions (particularly Kami's) to being alone are really relatable. For instance, Kami, whom I've always thought of as the epitome of a self-confident heroine, struggles with being sure of herself without Jared in her head to tell her that she's doing ok. Self-confidence is an issue everyone struggles with, and that really made Kami's character universal.

Of course, it wasn't just Jami that had my heart twisting and aching. Holly's POV comes in during Untold, and that was an emotional rollercoaster. I didn't really ship Holly/Angela in the first book, just because I felt like they were both too screwed up to be in a relationship yet, and Holly really needed to get herself figured out before she could move forward with anyone, but Untold showed a different side to that relationship (i.e. Holly's) and I feel now that Angela might be good for her. We learn about Holly's homelife, and her personal prejudices (which aren't what you'd think they'd be), and her internal struggle. SRB does a really good job of developing secondary characters because, even though the series is really Kami's story, we know so much about her friends and their parents and the lady who owns the bakery down the street. In a lot of books, secondary characters are kinda flat, but those in The Lynburn Legacy are so 3D they're practically IMAX.

It took me forever to finish the book because SRB did the thing where everything wraps up really nice 20 pages before the book ends. So, I read that far in like 2 days and then stopped. I wanted my babies to be happy for at least a little while. (I finally finished it yesterday right before I wrote this review).