The Ordeals

Overall Rating: 3/5

A lush mix of dark academia, romance, and fantasy... reminiscent of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games....

There were some parts of this I absolutely adored. The premise of the world, the magic, the deadly trials...The idea of an elite academy where one can go to hone their craft and become better at it...

This felt... not as complete and satisfactory as much as I feel it should've been. The world is there, but there are many parts in which it does not feel like it was developed completely... like the world is missing holes. Sure, the plot eventually leads us to some little hints, but there's nothing really solid lore-wise to contribute to how this world acts, how it runs, how its citizens flourish...

The dark academia part is there as well, but it is played down so much that it really seems to lose that sort of element in favor of focusing on the trials. I know that's the point of this book for the most part... but I don't feel like it should be classified as dark academia if there is hardly any focus on the academic side of the story...

The trials were enjoyable for the most part, but the end of the book also seemed to drag as the excitement and tensions were dying out...

but gods.... there are some parts of this book that are definitely more of a headache than they appear to be, and they overall really rubbed me the wrong way.... For one thing, the romance... the way they acted just never sat right with me the whole time, how they would go from being all soft and lovey-dovey to "I really don't care..."

The romance wasn't actually there at all and more seemed like an "instalove" situation that went into "instalust" with no actual development or raw emotion or structure to how the romance blossomed. All I read was them doing some form of physical way of showing their affections... and honestly... this is one of the things that I view as a way to just have me lose interest in the book to some degree. Sure, it's one way to develop a "bond" or to show "growth" to a relationship... but it feels overly fake if it's done this way and never compares to the real thing....

Maybe this wasn't for me. And that's ok.

If it were a little more smoothed over and a little heavier focused on the dark academia elements I know and love... then maybe I would've loved The Ordeals more than I did.