Book Review: Shielded (Shielded #1)

Shielded

Kaylynn Flanders

4/5

Jennesara has spent her entire life hiding her magic from her entire kingdom to prevent civil unrest. When she is basically bargained away to get more troops for her country to win a budding war, she tries to take it with grace. When her party is ambushed and she is thrown into the wild then into a foreign country where she doesn't have anyone to trust, things get even harder. She has trained her entire life to fight, but finds the reality a lot more daunting. 

Sometimes I get scared that I'm over young adult and then I read a book like this that I really genuinely enjoy and I realize I'm just sick of poorly written characters. Jenna and Enzo and Ren, they all really pop off the pages. It really reminds me of a duology I read a long time ago- Nemesis by Anna Banks. There are a ton of tropes woven through the pages to the point of major cliche but somehow it all just works perfectly and really just pushes you to the end. Some of the tropes include: only one bed, forced marriage scenario, princess who wins every fight she's ever been in on the premise of the force of her will and despite never having been in a fight before, backstabbing world leaders, and some hidden identities of course. 

So the problems were really just on the depth that some of the major plot events were given. Deaths glazed over, traumas just kind of ignored, and kind of a rushed pacing. I didn't hate it at all, but it was a lot more surface level than I would have preferred on some of the issues. I think it had a lot of construction flaws but honestly it deserves the four stars just for being so enjoyable despite that. I don't really know what it was I just think it was just intrinsically fun to read. I read it in one sitting, it was extremely bingeable and I would totally recommend it to people who love to dissociate through reading.