The characters are nothing new. Take whatever recently published fantasy book dubbed as a ‘TikTok book’, and you will find the same 2D, boring, plain characters. Kai is basically the dude from The Good Place that’s always taking off his shirt while combined with the ‘iNtErEsTiNg’ iCarly meme. She is the embodiment of a bad decision. The twin of danger and desire. The fine line between deadly and divine. And I can feel myself drowning.” ~ 🤭🤭 bc i love red queen, i knew i would enjoy this book too! lauren was very true to her words that this book is if red queen and the hunger games had a baby. though powerless very much resembles her parents lol This was a really enjoyable fantasy romance!! 🤩🤩 super fast-paced and easy to read, major Hunger Games vibes and the romance had SO MUCH chemistry 💜💜🫶🫶

Powerless by Lauren Roberts | Goodreads Powerless by Lauren Roberts | Goodreads

Only thing that was missing for me personally that would have brought this to a 5⭐️ would have been found family, true friendships being built.Paedyn is an intelligent, strong main character who I was rooting for from the beginning. She is calculating, perceptive and stubborn - a perfect match for the other half of this book's perspective, Kai. The slow burn is EVERYTHING, and their banter/dynamic made me fall in love with this book. The thing about building a book around tropes is that tropes are not meant to be the foundation of a book. Tropes are simply things that should come natural to the characters, things that enrich the reading process. A book based on tropes is a book with weak planning. Paedyn is every other poor, stubborn, thief protagonist. Boiled down, she’s a blonde Katniss. From the way she thinks to the arrows she fires in the Games—my bad, Trials.

Powerless by Lauren Roberts | The StoryGraph Powerless by Lauren Roberts | The StoryGraph

and the trial scenes👹👹 you know in the hunger games where they tend to each other's wounds?? MAYHAPS IT IS IN HERE TOO Powerless takes place in the kingdom of Ilya where The Plague raged, killing thousands. But the ones that survived were awarded special colorful hair and powers. Not everyone received these benefits though, and that led to the separation of the kingdom. The Elites and the Ordinary.i thought the writing was wonderful! honestly an amazing debut. the pacing, the storytelling, the romance, etc, i really enjoyed. i LOVE that it was dual pov and that the chapters were almost equal between the fmc and mmc. AND THERE ARE MULTIPLE BALLROOM EVENTS <333 love that in books. the banter was so good, i could read it forever. THEY REALLY DO HAVE CHEMISTRY If I kiss you—really kiss you, like how I've wanted to, how I've waited to—should I expect a dagger at my throat?" I’d love to talk about Paedyn, but she has no flaws. She’s perfect. No weakness whatsoever. Her only weakness is the people she loves, meaning she herself holds no imperfection. In other words, Paedyn might as well be a deity because Roberts does not bother to portray her as human.

Powerless by Lauren Roberts - online free at Epub Powerless by Lauren Roberts - online free at Epub

This bled into poor pacing. Every single time a major event or revelation happened, I noted how far it was into the book. It just felt very janky and bloated. It felt like the characters were static and nothing was really happening even tho people were quite literally dying. Every chapter ended with Kai being like "omfg what is this girl doing to me" and Pae being like "I fawking hate it here but I kinda wanna smash". The train was not moving. I was reading at the speed of light, breaking the sound barrier, and it still took sooooo long this book was so bloated. Wow. I just want to say that I have been with Lauren since the being of her TikTok. I watched almost every live and I remember the day she said, “I’m gonna write a book.” It’s truly inspiring to see her hard work and creativity pay off. He’s good at fighting, but so is every opponent in the Trials. Killing is no longer a measure of morality since murder has been recently romanticized by fantasy books, so, in what way is Kai a monster? Murder brings no consequence to the killer—not physically or emotionally—so why is murdering bad in this world? Because the book keeps on saying that people enjoy the Trials, even the Ordinary. So murder is glorified, deeming Kai a failed attempt at the whole morally grey trope. There were a couple typos in the book- it definitely could have been edited better. That didn't really affect my rating or enjoyment but just know that before going in. The book is needlessly long, with self indulgent scene after scene that served little purpose to the plot or to further character growth. Yes, I know they're fun to write. But it became very repetitive and very boring very fast. The tropes are fun, knife to throat and whatever etc etc, but I have to wonder why there are like 4 different instances of it and why they're almost identical in purpose and tone. And, what's worse, they're very telling rather than showing. The author needed to kill some darlings, kill MANY darlings.Surviving in the slums as an Ordinary is no simple task, and Paedyn knows this better than most. Having been trained by her father to be keenly observant since she was a child, Paedyn poses as a Psychic in the crowded city, blending in with the Elites as best she can to stay alive and out of trouble…easier said than done. let me start by saying that i didn’t (and still don’t) know who lauren is on booktok. so this review is unbiased as possible. 🫶🏻 (please don’t forget that a 3 stars isn’t a bad rating either.) No one knows this better than Paedyn Gray, an Ordinary posing as an Elite. When she unsuspectingly saves one of Ilya’s princes, Kai Azer, she’s thrown into the Purging Trials, a brutal competition to showcase her ‘Elite’ powers. Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya . . . The exceptional. The Elites. The Elites have possessed powers for decades, gifted to them by the Plague, while those born Ordinary are just that, banished from the kingdom and shunned from society.

Powerless By Roberts Lauren |The Works

I grew up reading Wattpad, and a metric shit ton of it. So, I'm very familiar with amateur writing, unpolished writing, and writing for fun, for the sake of writing. I do think writers should be compensated for their work, I can't expect everyone who's just writing what they love to do it for free, but like... there should be standards for a published novel that elevate it above something you can access for free on Wattpad (IN MY OPINION). If the Trials and the opponents don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for will if he discovers what Paedyn really is . . . completely Ordinary. kai azer is my new favorite book boyfriend. he gives off such a tristan dugray vibes ( if you know you know :)) and i’m literally living for it. i’m just so in love with confident, flirty and effortlessly funny men who are not scared to show interest. and he was it all. literally he is THE standard. i can’t even explain how much i’m in love with kai and paedyn. their relationship is my new favorite thing in the world. THE TENSION. literally died dead. All this said, Lauren Roberts’s writing has the potential to be good. There were times when I enjoyed myself. For example, when Kai woke up with the note,

the first half of this book was nearly a copy and paste of the hunger games. while some readers probably want that, it took away from originality for me. i could NOT stop comparing for storyline. (i have not read red queen, so i can’t compare to that one.) Both the plot and writing were also pretty good!! 🫶🫶 I really enjoyed the writing style and how easy it was to read, it made the book FLY by. There were also some seriously gorgeous lines that had my jaw on the floor. it was really good writing for a debut!! 😍😍 The plot was very entertaining and fast-paced. There was minimal worldbuilding and it was very easy to understand, so this is a great book if you want to get into fantasy! 💜💜