The Winner's Crime (Winner's Trilogy, #2)

by Marie Rutkoski

3.5 stars

I had the wind knocked out of me reading the first book in this lush and gorgeous YA series with it's transportive but still immensely accessible fantasy/historical landscape. I still get chills thinking about the impossibly heart wrenching love story between Kestrel and Arin. So while I quickly and eagerly embraced them and this world in THE WINNER'S CRIME, the book does fall prey to the second book syndrome with some slow parts.

I understand that the trilogy as a whole dictates that Kestrel and Arin be apart for most of this book, but that doesn't mean that the story delivers the same engrossing experience that the first book did. There is a lot of guilt and pain due to numerous misunderstandings between the couple. Sure much of that is because Kestrel is nobly sacrificing herself for Arin's good, but it did skirt the frustrating line for me a few times. The middle of the book especially felt slow as very little happened to advance the plot or characters. In the hands of a lesser writer, that may have fatally wounded the book, but not so with Marie Rutkoski. Her words paint beautifully and provocatively throughout. And the ending of this book is simply gutting. I was so caught up in the anguish of these characters that it felt like my own.

Marie Rutkoski has crafted a masterful story in The Winner's Trilogy. This second installment may have slowed some in the middle, but there is not a force on earth that could keep me from the final book. THE WINNER'S KISS is scheduled to be released on March 1, 2016.