Early Review: The Winner's Crime (The Winner's Curse #2)

The Winner's Crime (The Winner's Trilogy #1)
Marie Rutkoski

Published By: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication Date: March 3, 2015
Date Read: December 23, 2014
Genre: YA - Fantasy
Source: eARC For Review
Format: E-Book

From Goodreads:
Lady Kestrel's engagement to Valoria's crown prince calls for great celebration: balls and performances, fireworks and revelry. But to Kestrel it means a cage of her own making. Embedded in the imperial court as a spy, she lives and breathes deceit and cannot confide in the one person she really longs to trust ...

While Arin fights to keep his country's freedom from the hands of his enemy, he suspects that Kestrel knows more than she shows. As Kestrel comes closer to uncovering a shocking secret, it might not be a dagger in the dark that cuts him open, but the truth.

Lies will come undone, and Kestrel and Arin learn just how much their crimes will cost them in this second book in the breathtaking Winner's trilogy.

I was one of the very minority who didn't really like The Winner's Curse. I was so disappointed with it and spend the majority of it bored out of my mind. However I did really like the ending so I decided to take a chance with the sequel. The Winner's Crime was much like the first book in this series, a big disappointment to me.

The Winner's Crime started off so well and I was realy positive about it. I kept thinking how much better this was from the first one already (within the first 50 pages) and then as I started to read more and more the more disengaged I became from the story. I had started off so interested and happy because there was actually things happening and then as I got closer to the 100 page mark the less things were happening and I became bored stupid... AGAIN!

I am so beyond disappointed in this series. I wanted to love it so much. It had the recipe for something that I would love but the execution of what could have been a fantastic story lacked. I just couldn't get through this book because I was too bored and I really had no interest in reading any more. I didn't want to pick up the book and found every excuse I could not to read it.

The Winner's Trilogy is a very character-centred story and Marie, as fantastic as her writing is, spends the majority of her time world-building and building up her characters and, for me, not enough time with the plot and having things actually happen to further the characters and their story. I was far too bored. As a plot-driven reader this is definitely not the series for me.

PS, Am I the only one who is irritated as hell by the apostrophes in the titles? It doesn't need to be there as it would read The Winner Is Curse or The Winner Is Crime... THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!!!!