Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Publish Date: October 2nd, 2012
Source: ARC
Goodreads

Rating: 3/5 Birthmarks

Synopsis: After defying the ruthless Enclave, surviving the wasteland, and upending the rigid matriarchy of Sylum, Gaia Stone now faces her biggest challenge ever.  She must lead the people of Sylum back to the Enclave and persuade the Protectorat to grant them refuge from the wasteland.  In Gaia’s absence, the Enclave has grown more cruel, more desperate to experiment on mothers from outside the wall, and now the stakes of cooperating or rebelling have never been higher.  Is Gaia ready, as a leader, to sacrifice what–or whom–she loves most? -Goodreads

Review: I had really been looking forward to Promised as it is the last book of it’s series and was beautifully set up to combine the societies we first met in Birthmarked and Prized. Maybe I hyped it up a bit too much in my head, but I ended up feeling a little disappointed in both the plot and the overall resolution of this super fun dystopian series.

Reading this book you will definitely not be pining for more action as there is always a lot going on and Gaia constantly seems to have some mission or other that she’s gotten herself convinced she must complete. This girl is stubborn and will absolutely do what it takes to survive. After book two she had a lot of important responsibilities fall to her and she takes it all very seriously.

What I really love about this series is that all three societies that have been introduced (The Enclave, Wharfton and Sylum) are all so drastically different and true dystopians, yet it’s also obvious what they have in common, the things that make us all the same. The most obvious is how Highly valued children are, and while they all come to this for different reasons children are always the future of any civilization.

The first area I really had a problem with was the authors use of Gaia’s love interest, Leon. On more than one occasion it has been mentioned that Leon could be pretty much a sociopath and I never felt myself enamored enough with him that I would stick up for his character on principal, which seemed to be what the author is going for. Mention something like that once and it will always be there in the back of everyone’s kind, and sociopaths are not swoon worthy.

It was really the ending that got me here though. The story concludes but it doesn’t even feel like a resolution, let alone a triumph. In some ways it’s down right disheartening. The characters are still in pretty unhappy circumstances and we don’t get to really see how these three societies will come together. I still really recommend the first two books in this series, and you should probably read Promised just to see how it all ends, but I can’t say I don’t wish things had ended differently.

Buy Promised by Caragh O’Brien
the book @Amazon (US) @Amazon (CAN) @The Book Depository

Second Opinions:
@Mundie Moms
@Owl Read It
@Live to Read