League of Liars

Astrid Scholte’s new YA book has a little bit of everything – part courtroom drama, part love story and set in a fantasy world where magic is dangerous and frowned upon, it will surely speak to a lot of teens. Cayder knows that the use of edem is dangerous and forbidden and those who temper with it are to be punished. He has his heart set on becoming a prosecutor to ensure just that, in fact. When he gets the chance to apprentice a public defender he, naturally, jumps at the chance. When Cayder gets to know the defendants who he’s supposed to help get free, however, his beliefs and convictions start to crumble and he needs to decide, once and for all, whose side he wants to be on. Astrid Scholte’s books seem to be kind of hit-or-miss for me. I wasn’t a particularly big fan of her debut, but loved „The Vanishing Deep“, so I wasn’t sure what to expect of „League of Liars“. I enjoyed the concept a lot and loved the court-setting, because it’s something I am not used to encountering in a YA fantasy. Furthermore, I liked that the author included issues like corruption and cencorship, but would have hoped for a little bit of a faster pace, overall. Unfortunately there are a lot more things I didn’t particularly like, though. Firstly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the characters. I wasn’t able to relate to a single one of them and didn’t care for what was happening to them. Secondly, I found the romance part to be rather unnecessary. To be fair, the love stories are not the focus of the story. Still, on top of there being zero chemistry, the book would simply have been fine without any couples, in the first place. Last but not least, I am not a fan of the ending at all – especially because it’s not confirmed to be part of a series. A lot of questions remain unanswered and most of the problems unsolved. I truly hope that there will be a sequel because the cliffhanger at the end would be just cruel, otherwise. Ultimately, I neither loved nor hated this book. It was kind of a mediocre read in my opinion. If you are looking for a YA fantasy novel with a unique magic system and prefer slow-paced stories to fast-paced ones, I’d still recommend you’d give it a try, though.