About the Book
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Author:
- Marie Lu
Cover Story: Behind The Scenes
BFF Charm: You’re In Danger x 2
Talky Talk: Polyglot Potential
Bonus Factor: Surprising Skills, Coach Taylor Award
Anti-Bonus Factor: Crossover Confusion, Genre Confusion, Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenting
Relationship Status: Back To The Training Floor
Cover Story: Behind The Scenes
I like this cover. Sydney and Winter look just like I imagined them. Drawing them in formal wear (Sydney’s burgundy gown is gorgeous, although not something she’d actually wear in her bodyguard role) and hiding from the gala behind a curtain is a great way to show how they’re each other’s refuge from the facade they put up for the rest of the world.
The Deal:
It’s been a year since Winter Young’s and Sydney Cossette’s first mission as spy partners, but they haven’t forgotten about each other. With one of Sydney’s fellow agents gone missing in Singapore, where Winter just happens to be booked for a gala, it’s too good an opportunity for their agency’s director (who not-so-secretly ships them) to ignore. The trouble is that Winter, who is terrible at saying no, has somehow invited his ex-girlfriend to be his date for the gala … and Sydney’s ex-boyfriend is the agent they’re supposed to rescue. Fun, right? And by the way, someone wants to kill the U.S. president. Not exactly the reunion they were hoping for.
BFF Charm: You’re In Danger x 2
I understand that this is a spy caper, and taking risks is par for the course, but some of Sydney and Winter’s decisions genuinely make me wonder why they haven’t been fired. They trust people who have already proven themselves untrustworthy, namely their exes, who have done things like leave Sydney stranded in a foreign country or lock Winter out of his own house. They lie and keep secrets from their superiors, whom they claim to respect. Kids, you’re trying to prevent a war and save a world leader’s life. Would it kill you to talk to a grown-up about it?
Swoonworthy Scale: 8
Sydney and Winter (especially Sydney) start off the story in deep denial about their feelings, using their exes as shields to pretend they’re over each other. The danger they’re thrown into, however (and the reminder of why they broke up with their exes in the first place) soon cause them to open up to each other, and things get very physically and emotionally intimate, very quickly.
Talky Talk: Polyglot Potential
Sydney has a gift for learning languages. While eavesdropping on a Mandarin speaker, she finds it a challenge to decipher the tones and place unfamiliar words in context. I would have liked to see more scenes like this. In a spy story featuring international politics, with a love story between characters from different ethnicities, it would have been interesting to see linguistics and translation play a role.
Bonus Factor: Surprising Skills
Winter keeps finding unexpected uses for his pop star skills as a secret agent. Learning choreography helps him learn to fight, pulling Houdini-esque stunts on stage helps him escape being tied up, being a performer helps him keep his cover, and sometimes all he has to do is show his face at the right time and create a diversion.
Bonus Factor: Coach Taylor Award
Claire, Winter’s manager, cares more about him than his own parents do. She ends interviews if they make him uncomfortable, sends lawyers after unauthorized biographers, orders his bodyguards into formation like a general to keep him safe in a crowd, and reminds him to eat and sleep when he forgets.
Anti-Bonus Factor: Crossover Confusion
Winter performs at the Warcross Games’ opening ceremony and meets Hideo and Emika, which means this series takes place in the same universe – or does it? The effects of Hideo’s NeuroLink would have made the events of Stars and Smoke impossible, or at least highly improbable. At the very least, Sydney would have remembered the Link affecting her. Hearing the world-changing events of Wildcard hand-waved away as “a data breach of some sort” jarred me right out of the story.
Anti-Bonus Factor: Genre Confusion
If you’re going to blend genres – romance and suspense, for example – it’s important to keep them balanced so that one doesn’t distract from the other. This series, unfortunately, doesn’t get the balance quite right. As a pop star/bodyguard romance about the pressures of the music industry, unresolved family trauma and opposites-attract tension, it’s fun and engaging and sometimes even emotional. But the spy story elements feel formulaic, from the betrayal to the villain monologue. Also, the wider implications of the terrorists’ plot are hardly mentioned. Since Winter is a Chinese American trying to prevent a war between America and China, it’s hard to believe that he would think about it only in the abstract, and not as something that could affect him personally.
Anti-Bonus Factor: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenting
Winter’s parents are, if possible, even worse in this book than the last one. His mother is more forgetful than ever, and the emotional abuse his father inflicts in a single phone call makes the actual terrorists he faces later seem cartoonish in comparison.
Relationship Status: Back To The Training Floor
You’ve made some mistakes, Book, but I still believe you have potential. Call me when your sequel shows up.
Literary Matchmaking
To learn more about Sydney and Winter’s first mission, read the prequel.
Shine by Jessica Jung is another love story set in the pop music industry.
Kill Her Twice by Stacey Lee is a thriller that goes a little deeper into Chinese-American history.
FTC Full Disclosure: I received no compensation for this review. Icon and Inferno is available now.
Sequel? Wait, I thought this was a duology! It’s a secret trilogy??
My bad. I was speculating. The story didn’t sound to me like it was finished, but no third volume has been announced.