Book 13/30.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
No mourners.
No funerals.
AND JUST LIKE THAT (snaps fingers) THE SIX OF CROWS DUOLOGY IS MY FAVOURITE BOOK(S) OF ALL TIME!!
Such a bold statement (literally 😅), especially from someone who has never really had a favourite book before, but wow this was beyond incredible!!! It took me six days to read this and every minute spent reading during those six days were some of the best of my entire life! No cap! Six of Crows is a rollercoaster ride of emotions with twists and turns that don’t give you a second, let alone a minute, to catch your breath.
I added SoC to my Goodreads Want to Read shelf on October 4, 2016. I finally got around to reading it 7 ½ years later and yooo it did NOT disappoint!! Books like this are the reason I fell in love with reading almost three decades ago(🤯🥴). Books like this are the reason Young Adult is my second favourite genre (after Romance). Everything about this, from start to end, was sheer perfection. It gave EVERYTHING a good book is supposed to give! Every! Single!! Thing!!! There was flawless world building, pitch-perfect character development, superior plot and pacing, madd drama, serious suspense, banging banter, lowkey romance, highkey romance, MAJOR ships 💑, high stakes, secret alliances, delightful dalliances, characters with varying ethnicities and sexual orientations 👩🏽🤝👨🏻👨🏼🤝👨🏾, sizzling sexual tension… you name it, it had it.
SoC tells the story about six dangerous outcasts and one impossible heist. Criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker has been offered a chance at a deadly heist: break into the Ice Court — a military stronghold that has never been breached — and retrieve a hostage whose knowledge could change Grisha magic forever. To succeed would mean riches beyond Kaz’s wildest dreams, but he can’t pull it off alone. He enlists the help of five people, 3 Crows and 2 non-members, and the synopsis describes the six dangerous outcasts as:
1. A convict with a thirst for revenge
2. A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager
3. A runaway with a privileged past
4. A spy known as the Wraith
5. A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums
6. A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes
I had a lot of fun in the beginning trying to figure out who was who and so I will not spoil the fun for you if you haven’t read the book by revealing the identities.
That’s enough gushing, now onto the actual review and I’mma start by saying that I loooooooved Kaz Brekker. CAN SOMEONE GET ME A KAZ BREKKER FOR CHRISTMAS PLEASE AND THANK YOU. Kaz was insanely clever and sexy and wow just like that Atlas from It Ends with Us has been replaced as my ultimate book boyfriend #Kalerie 👩🏽🤝👨🏻There is something to be said about a bad boy with soul and Kaz Brekker, aka Dirtyhands, is as good bad as it gets 🥵🥵🥵 He could go from your worst nightmare to loveable wreck to raging protector in a matter of pages and I loved everything about that and him!! He is my second favourite anti-hero of all time, second only to Taylor Swift, and to know me is to know how deeply that clever wordplay articulates my love for Kaz Brekker.
All six outcasts were dope and badass and full of surprises, but other than Kaz my other fave is Inej. She is such a motherphucking badass! She is basically a freaking ninja! I staaaannn!! The novel is narrated from five perspectives told in alternating chapters filled with breathtaking flashbacks woven between the very arresting present. I initially preferred Kaz and Inej’s POVs more than the other three, but with time I got to see that even if I never wanted their POVs to end, the next POV was still gonna be bomb AF and leave me wanting more. Leigh Bardugo ended each chapter with a little cliffhanger that had me eager to return to that POV, while also being eager to pick up a cliffhanger from a previous POV. Which is a huge testament to her skill as it’s not easy to craft two enchanting POVs, let alone five. So while Kaz and Inej were my initial faves, I ended up falling in love with the entire crew. Jesper was sooo fucking funny, Wylan was cute and earnest and good, Nina was full of heart and fire, and Matthias was heartrendingly honourable and wholesome.
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED the slow burn of all three romantic relationships as well as that of the friendships of all six members of the crew. The high stakes heist grew the various relationships of all six from varying stages of hate/dislike/begrudging like/downright like ➡️ respect ➡️ swoonworthy relationship/friendship. I also liked that the romance subplots never took over the story, allowing the heist to remain front and centre of the narrative. And oh how I shipped both the lowkey and highkey romances!! I also warmed to the friendships amongst all six of them as they were all so different from each other, but Inej + Nina and Inej + Jesper were my favourite friendships. I loved that the author didn’t pit Inej and Nina against each other, but instead celebrated them as two badass women with varying backgrounds and strengths who were each other’s keeper and cheerleader, illustrating a potent message about the power of female friendships. Inej and Jesper were a shining example of a platonic male-female relationship done right, and I particularly enjoyed their mutual yet unspoken attraction to Kaz.
I have never read a more perfect book and I loved everything about this more than my own life. Lol. For real though. Now onto Crooked Kingdom, the next (and last 😭😭) book in the duology 🥲😢
PS: this book gives away a spoiler of who from the Shadow and Bone trilogy 🙄😤 as it’s set two years after the end of the trilogy, but focuses on a new set of characters and different plots in a different country, though they are both in the Grishaverse so/meaning both worlds are interconnected.
** A guide to ratings **
1 star – did not like it
2 stars – it was okay
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
Lwile the Leo 