I'm sorry, but I could not bring myself to give this anything more than 2 stars. It just wasn't for me. Let me make something very clear: I hardly eveI'm sorry, but I could not bring myself to give this anything more than 2 stars. It just wasn't for me. Let me make something very clear: I hardly ever read mysteries, let alone YA mysteries. I am a hardcore middle-grade fantasy lover. My favourite books are Harry Potter, Keeper of the Lost Cities and Percy Jackson. My Youth leader loved this book, though, so I thought I'd give it a try.
I thought I was getting an epic mystery. I thought I was getting a literal game. I did not think I was getting this super-cliche story with too many unnecessary plot points and bad romance. If this book was a person, it would be a blonde, high-pitched-voiced, sixteen-year-old bookworm who thinks YA is THE genre, is a hopeless romantic and follows every 2020s trend- so not me. I'm NOT saying anyone who likes this book acts like this. My Youth leader is not like this, for instance. I'm using a metaphor. My copy has one of those irremovable stickers that reads 'a must-read TikTok sensation'. I should have put the book down right away.
Barnes might've come up with a good mystery. Except I felt myself getting lost at parts, confused, wondering why anything was necessary. It's been about six months since I've finished this book and I still can't tell you anything that happened at the end of the book.
The characters. Oh, gosh, the characters. I did NOT like them one bit. They felt like cardboard. They felt like try-hards. They felt like all my characters from the books I haven't properly paid attention to. Everyone was SO ANNOYING and pretentious and self-absorbed. I'm sorry, I just could not connect to any of them. Honestly, the only decent characters were Xander and what-his-name, the bodyguard dude. John? I don't even remember his name.
The writing was boring. The plot was boring and confusing. This book tried WAY too hard to appeal to modern teens. Why must every YA book from the last 20 years feature romance as a main plot? I don't get it. I know, I know. Keeper of the Lost Cities features romance, and pretty heavily at that, but something about the romance in The Inheritance Games felt really off. Was it cliche? Yes, that was it. It was SO. CLICHE. It was like Sophie x Fitz from KotLC but WORSE. I felt nothing while reading. I felt nothing between the characters.
I'll never not be disappointed that the titles means so little. THERE IS NO GAME.
So, where do the two stars come from? It kept me reading. I'm not sure if that was necessarily a good thing- it might have been because I really wanted to be done with this. But if I had, I would have DNFed. So clearly Barnes writes well enough to make me want to finish the story, even if it didn't make much sense.
Again, sorry to anyone who liked this. I simply did not. I will not be reading the sequels, and I'm donating my copy as soon as I possibly can. If there's one thing the Inheritance Games did teach me, though, it was that I am not one who enjoys reading outside my genres. I'll stick to fantasy and leave it at that. Maybe I will consider a reread, but then again maybe not. After all, mysteries are no longer exciting when you know what happens....more
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