The Sandcastle Empire – Another over-hyped book in the pile

You’ve been seeing this book everywhere , right ? Me too ! And all those reviews are glowing and glittering so much that I’m near blind with the effect of it ! But what was actually in the book ?

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The Sandcastle Empire by Kayla Olson

Genre : Young Adult-Dystopia

Rating: ★★

Summary : 

When all hope is gone, how do you survive? 

Before the war, Eden’s life was easy—air conditioning, ice cream, long days at the beach. Then the revolution happened, and everything changed.

Now a powerful group called the Wolfpack controls the earth and its resources. Eden has lost everything to them. They killed her family and her friends, destroyed her home, and imprisoned her. But Eden refuses to die by their hands. She knows the coordinates to the only neutral ground left in the world, a place called Sanctuary Island, and she is desperate to escape to its shores.

Eden finally reaches the island and meets others resistant to the Wolves—but the solace is short-lived when one of Eden’s new friends goes missing. Braving the jungle in search of their lost ally, they quickly discover Sanctuary is filled with lethal traps and an enemy they never expected. 

This island might be deadlier than the world Eden left behind, but surviving it is the only thing that stands between her and freedom.

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My Thoughts :

I’m a sheep again

I wanted to love this one so much but unfortunately , the tragedy of ‘so much potential no execution ‘ hit me real hard again and threw me in the book hospital . Can we just talk of the potential that over ruled the book ? Can we ?!

I’m not kidding you when I say that Eden was the best character in this book . And then there’s Alexa ❤ ….but that’s my reaction to them at the start of the book . They took a 360 degree turn and turned into those emotionally clingy , not so strong people who always fawned over their boyfriends and boy , I so can’t tolerate that bullshit . My sensitive girl power instinct is severely wounded now !

But that’s not even the worst thing , what I hated the most was the romance . Forget that that I hate the spineless girl the brave Eden turned into after getting into a relationship , the romance felt too forced . It was like , the author wanted to fit a relationship in because YA needed romance and not because it would go with the flow . * gasping because YA without romance can’t exist ! *

And I’ve been looking for diversity in books that I read a lot these days and this book sucked at that. Can the good Dystopian authors let go of the same old America and plod the potential fields further ? Like , it’s boring for me , you all . Every time I pick a book in this genre , I’m always looking for the default American corporation / rulers etc . We have 195 countries and you always pick that one country ! Shall we move on already ?!

The one other thing I couldn’t tolerate is the implication that the poor turn into the bad guys because they’re jealous of the rich . Really ? How many good richies have you met ? You wanna really tell that poor= evil ??? Now that is one message you really don’t want to send , especially with the current social trend .

The only thing I liked moderately till the end was the plot itself and that too was so messy that I regret the time spent on it . It was an ok read , I guess .

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Have you read this one already ? What do you think of this ? 

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