A Darker Shade of Magic - V. E. Schwab

A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab ★★★★ 4.0

This book gets 4 stars! Here's why:

• Kell & Rhy's relationship = <3
• ...four Londons.
• The Danes
• Magic, of course.
• Lila Bard totally grew on me!

I thought this book was SO well-written and such a good story! It was incredibly captivating the whole time (except for the first 80 pages or so). Especially... THE DANES. Holy goodness. They were insane. They reminded me of the Lovers in the Arcana Chronicles. You'd think that would be a bad thing, but I LOVE a good villain. I mean, I hated them. But I loved their roles in the book. I only wish they were more involved in it.

Having four different worlds, all connected, was really cool. I liked that Kell was one of the only two people able to travel between the Londons. Well, you know, with the exception of Lila because of the stone, but that counts as extenuating circumstances. I also liked that the Londons were SO unique. Like, vastly different. WORLDS different, in fact!

Rhy is adorable. He reminds me of Dorian in Throne of Glass. I just love him. And I love that Kell & Rhy were so close. Rhy considered Kell family, even though his parents maybe didn't so much.

Lastly, Lila was a great character. I felt like she was really well-developed, and I'm excited to learn more about her in the next book! It feels like there is so much that was just mentioned, but I need to hear the backstory! I thought I would hate her at first, but I was entirely mistaken. She was strong, funny, and a good friend. She had a few unexpected moments when we saw her emotions a little more than she wanted, I'm sure, but those slips are what made her so real.

Basically, I thought this book was amazing. It took me about a week to read, however, because was is NOT the type of book that I could just set down when I was busy, pick it back up again, etc. I had to be fully involved in reading it. I couldn't take a lot of breaks because there was so much going on. I am giving it 4 out of 5 stars because it seemed kind of slow in the beginning AND I needed more of the Dane twins! They were so EVIL. Victoria Schwab could have done so much more with them! But I respect her decisions, and love her beautiful writing either way. (: