Review: DEV1AT3

DEV1AT3 by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Can it be?

Did Jay Kristoff write a book that I wasn't super duper invested in like I almost always am when he wields his deadly pen?

Don't get me wrong, Mister Kristoff still more than earns his reputation as one of YA's deadliest, rockstarinest writers. True cert'. But also true cert' - reading this book, I felt like Kristoff was phoning it in a bit. I mean, it had to happen eventually with the way he's always juggling so many projects at once - this year, his latest collab with Amie Kaufman on Aurora Rising coming out first, and the long-awaited Darkdawn this fall. But in the middle, with the middle entry of the LIFEL1K3 trilogy, it does undeniably feel like Kristoff has lost a little bit of his touch, a piece of Sophomore Slump compounded by the feeling that this book was put out as so much product more for contractual reasons than anything else.


But I'm not gonna write this book off completely, not at all. I mean, not with that cover, one of the prettiest I've ever seen. Not with the twists that keep throwing themselves at Eve and Lemon and Cricket and all our poor dear gentlefriends who deserve so much better. I only wish that this book had been a little tighter with plot, more trimmed. And that it didn't feel like I, the reader, was fighting to keep the characters and their storylines straight half the time.

But that ending, though.

Bloody DAMN, Mister Kristoff.

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