Book Review: Awakened
☕️☕️☕️ (3 Cups)
Awakened is a noticeable step up in character development from Fated. Several characters feel more fleshed out, more layered, and more emotionally grounded, which made it easier to stay invested in the story and the series as a whole.
Emotionally, this book delivered. I felt anticipation, joy, sadness, and genuine surprise throughout. There was tension, relief, and moments that made me smile — and that emotional range is a big reason I kept turning pages.
Where the book struggled for me was pacing and structure. Areya is given a very limited amount of time to train in order to save Ash, yet those two weeks pass incredibly quickly and with very little struggle. Considering the stakes, I wanted more tension, more failure, more earning of progress.
On the flip side, a large portion of the book is devoted to a competition in the land of giants. This section was fun, entertaining, and did a lot of work building character relationships and introducing new players who will clearly matter later in the series. I understand what the author was aiming for here — and on its own, this portion worked — but it wasn’t central to the immediate conflict driving the series.
The issue wasn’t any single part of the story, but how much time was spent on each part compared to its importance. The training felt rushed, the competition felt extended, and then the story snapped back to the main plot toward the end. The balance just didn’t quite land for me.
That said, the pacing issues weren’t enough to pull me out of the series entirely. I finished the book, felt a lot of emotions, and immediately wanted to know what happened next — which matters.
Awakened earns 3 cups: flawed, emotionally engaging, and compelling enough to keep me reading.