takes two to book review

Alexis:

Destroy the Day is the final book in the Defy the Night trilogy, and Defy the Night is one of my favorite books! It’s a classic upper YA fantasy with political intrigue, romance, and a sickness spreading through the land. The two main characters are Tessa, a Robinhood-like apothecary, and Corrick, the prince of Kandala and the King’s Justice.

I really enjoyed Destroy the Day. The story dives deeper into the world, politics, and scheming of the Kandala government. Kemmerer’s writing flows really well, and I feel like her writing style works well when switching between POVs.

Speaking of which, Destroy the Day has three different POVs: Tessa, Corrick, and Corrick’s brother, King Harristan. Harristan’s chapters end up taking up about as much of the book as Tessa and Corrick’s, which honestly, I like! I think Harristan is a great character, and he’s such a good foil to Corrick (stoic and reserved to Corrick’s more hotheadedness). 

What I really appreciated about this book was Kemmerer’s talent in making me care about every single character. Usually, I’m not into new, important side characters being introduced later in a series, but Kemmerer does a great job of really showing the impact a new character has on Tessa. A couple of side characters from the second book end up having bigger roles, and I enjoyed watching them grow and help the main characters grow. I especially enjoyed the emphasis on friendship.

Another aspect I really loved about this book is the way no one is a straight-up villain. Kemmerer makes all of her characters well-rounded with solid motivations, so no character is black and white (yep—that means there are some well-written morally gray characters in this series).

Now, I have two main gripes in this book that I’ll delve into more below with spoilers. But the first one is that we get barely any scenes with Tessa and Corrick together. Yes, there are solid reasons for this, but in the end of the book, I really felt like they needed some more scenes together before the resolution. My second gripe is with an important plot point near the end that I feel like didn’t fit into two of the character arcs, which I’ll talk more about below. 

All in all, I loved this finale! However, I’m still not over the ending, so I have to dock half a star (or moon, in this case) for that.

VERDICT: 🌑🌑🌑🌑🌓

SPOILERS BELOW: 

If you’ve read this book already, or if you don’t care about spoilers, hello! So at the end of this book there is a heartbreaking scene of Harristan sacrificing himself for his country and his brother. While I saw this coming, I came to terms with it because I thought it fit Harristan’s character, as he would do anything to save his brother and his people.

…Until Quint, Harristan’s new boyfriend, decides to help him, and they die together. This felt a little bit too much like the “bury your gays” trope (aka gay characters tend to get killed off).

And then something felt off, and I just had a feeling that neither of them actually died. And while (ding ding!) I was right, the way it was revealed rubbed me the wrong way—Harristan and Quint escaped and survived, only to hear that Corrick had already arrived back home and been crowned king. So what did they do? They hid in a cabin with false identities. And not with the intention of saying, “Oh, hey! We actually survived and we’ll come back to the castle now.” Nope. It was to start a new, secret life.

Harristan’s main motivations were to save Corrick and to save his people. He spent this entire book earning the people of Kandala’s trust back, only to decide to push the burden of being king onto his nineteen-year-old brother, who the people trusted even less than Harristan. You just can’t tell me that it’s in character for him to just say, “Too late! Just spread the lie that we died,” AND let his brother believe it for a long time before managing to slip him a note.

Anyway. Did I still love the book? Yes. It just sucked that this was the twist at the end because I didn’t feel like it fit into Harristan’s character arc—not to mention Quint, who is Corrick’s best friend.

Lesson: Don’t bury your gays! Even if they come back from the dead.