Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

Summary: After a year of hard labor in the Salt Mines of Endovier, eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien has won the king's contest to become the new royal assassin. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown – a secret she hides from even her most intimate confidantes.
Keeping up the deadly charade—while pretending to do the king's bidding—will test her in frightening new ways, especially when she's given a task that could jeopardize everything she's come to care for. And there are far more dangerous forces gathering on the horizon -- forces that threaten to destroy her entire world, and will surely force Celaena to make a choice.

Where do the assassin’s loyalties lie, and who is she most willing to fight for?

With the first book in the series, people seemed to either love it or hate it. I was one of the people that loved it--it had me so caught up in the story that the flaws other people seemed so hung up on barely registered with me while I was reading. With this book, in the end, I think I loved it just as much as the first.
Celaena annoyed me quite a bit in this one...but then, that's okay because characters should be flawed so when she'd say something or do something that was annoying or selfish, it may have irritated me for a while but I like that she wasn't portrayed as being perfect. I loved her relationships with Chaol and Nehemia.

The book was kind of split in half for me. In the first half of the book, the plot tended to drag sometimes, but the romance kept me totally hooked (can I keep Chaol?) so even when there wasn't much else to hold my interest, I kept turning the pages for that. While in the second half, the plot picked up and that was what kept me reading in that part and I really like the direction the story has started to take--it ended in a way that left me desperate to read the next book in the series.

The book wasn't perfect (like, there were little things that didn't quite make sense*), but I pretty much loved it. It's addictive, kept me hooked from start to finish, and it I love the characters. Can it be 2014 now so I can read the next one?

Rating: 4 (or 4.5) out of 5.

(Sorry this review isn't very good, most of what I wanted to talk about was too spoiler-ish to make it into the review.)

Later.

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