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You Won't Know I'm Gone by Kristen Orlando Review

Hello Everyone :)


I hope you're all doing well, and I want to thank you for joining me for another book review here on the Preppy Book Princess.


February was a month where I ended up finishing quite a few books, most of them were really good, but there were a few that I ended up not enjoying as much as I was hoping to. It seems that for the most part I tend to feature primarily positive reviews on my blog, but every now and then I think it's important to review books I didn't enjoy as well, as it's not possible to love every single book I read.


You Won't Know I'm Gone by Kristen Orlando:




Source: Library

Publisher: Swoon Reads

Publication Date: January 16th, 2018

Genre: Young Adult Fiction

Series: The Black Angel Chronicles


Synopsis:

Going rogue in an effort to rescue her kidnapped parents has cost Reagan Hillis her automatic ticket to the Training Academy. But becoming a Black Angel is the only way Reagan will be able to exact revenge on her mother’s merciless killer, Santino Torres.

When Reagan is given a chance to prove that she’s worthy of training to be a Black Angel, she also gets the first chance she’s ever had to be her true self. No aliases. No disguises.

But when her friend Luke joins her at the Black Angels training compound, Reagan finds herself once again torn between the person she was and the person she wants to be. Reagan has to prove that she's as good as her parents trained her to be, because she’ll never find Torres without the Black Angels’ help.




My Review:

The Black Angel Chronicles was recommended to me by someone who knew just how much I adore Ally Carter's books. The Gallagher Girls remains one of my favorite series of all time, and so when I heard about another spy type young adult series, I knew I wanted to give it a try. I'm going to be completely honest and say that the first book in the series was not what I was really expecting, and I didn't truly find myself enjoying it. However, I was interested in it enough to want to continue on with the second book, but unfortunately my feelings for this one were pretty much the same as I felt about the first book.

To start with, this is a very dark series. A lot of the content goes quite deep for a young adult novel, and I'd definitely advise being aware of this before picking it up. There's a couple scenes of death and torture in particular that were really gruesome, and I can picture a lot of readers struggling while reading it.

Secondly, I'm not often a fan of books that focus primarily around drug cartels. I tend to prefer when espionage type books focus on information and data, rather than drugs, and I found this story line got tiresome for me quite early on.

However, my main issue with this book overall was the character of Reagan herself. While I didn't love her character in the first book, I didn't have too many problems with her. However, in this one she turns into someone barely recognizable from the first book, and I really couldn't stand her. This whole book is basically her making a series of selfish decisions with no regard to her family, friends, or the entire organization for which she works for. She puts so many people she's supposed to care about into precarious situations, all because of her own selfish agenda, and I really couldn't stand reading about it. 

I didn't enjoy the inclusion of explicit language in the first book, and that was an issue for me with this one as well. It seemed unnecessary to the story, and uncalled for in the genre. 

Unfortunately for me, this one is really not what I was expecting, and I only gave it two out of five stars. Apart from it being about spies, I really don't see the similarities to The Gallgaher Girls that many others have mentioned. I don't know at this point if I'll be reading the last book in this series or not, but I do know it's not high on my priority list at this point. 

Final Rating: ⭐⭐


Thanks so much for reading guys! Have a great rest of your day.


This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The photo does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owners. 

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