Ignite Me Set Me Alight

That’s the way to do it! This book had the perfect, and I mean *perfect* love triangle. As you may or may not know, I almost always hate love triangles- but have noted that there are exceptions to this rule. And I am pleased to say THIS BOOK WAS MY EXCEPTION!!

This book didn’t just go in for the lazy love triangle to create drama- it actually showed how people might think they’re in love when they’re not really, falling out of love with an illusion and how painful all of that really is. It went beyond just being a teenage eye-rolling drama because of that.

Not only did Taherah Mafi deal with the complexities of human relationships in a compelling manner, but I also liked how the characters grew as people. In fact, I loved how the author showed self-awareness in her writing, having Juliette grow from a whiny, teary individual to one serious bad ass. And not in a lazy copout kind of way- it actually felt like she’d developed and recognised her own flaws- so kudos to the author there!

Sadly, this was far from perfect. Most notably this came across in how crap the plan for fighting the Restablishment was- it pretty much amounted to: “we go in, we take out the bad guys, we take over…” Umm yeah. Clearly no one in the book is much of a military strategist. And that turned out okay, because, *spoiler alert*, the whole war took about 20-30 pages- which was a ridiculously small amount of space to give it- and luckily for all the good guys there was no real conflict. So… yay?

But for all my complaints about that- and I did actually laugh at this while reading it- this really wasn’t a book about that kind of drama. This was really a story about people and their relationships with each other. All that other drama was definitely just a part of the backdrop. And you know what? That’s okay. Believe me, I’m very surprised at myself for saying this, but I was pretty darn satisfied with it regardless. I’d give it a solid:

Rating 4/5 bananas

One satisfied Orangutan…

So have you read this book? Did you like it? Dislike it? And what book did you love in spite of its flaws? Let me know in the comments!