*This is a review of an Advanced Readers Copy*
I had moderately high expectations going into Perfect Ruin. I absolutely loved the Chemical Garden trilogy and since then Lauren DeStefano has become one of my all time favorite authors. So when I had an opportunity to get an ARC of Perfect Ruin, I jumped at it. I have been fangirling over this book before it even had a title. So was I disappointed to any degree upon my completion of the novel? Not at all. There are a few things I absolutely love about Lauren DeStefano’s writing.
Number one: everything is so beautiful and poetic. She has this way of writing that just makes everything sound so lyrical. I especially loved the “excerpts” from a student’s essay at the beginning of each chapter.
Number two: world building. Both Wither and Perfect Ruin start us out in a fully rendered universe and plot that are masterfully crafted. What I loved about the world building in Perfect Ruin was that it was completely different from Wither–almost a complete 180, but you could still see that it was by the same author.
Number three: character creation. Every character she creates has a distinct voice. That can be hard to do. I just marvel at how authors can create so many separate people with different personalities and not falter once. I loved every character in this novel. Really. I did.
I will say it took a little while for everything to get going, but once the ball started rolling, it didn’t stop. There were so many twists in the plot and the story was just so rich and drenched in the made up history of the floating city. The one thing I really loved was the fact that everyone has a betrothed. With Morgan already betrothed to Basil (who I swooned over), it eliminated the whole “mysterious love interest” angle from the plot that so many other YA novels have. I can only take much of those. So instead of having the two of them meet and magically fall in love, they’ve already known each other their whole lives. Instead we get to see them just as their relationship starts to turn into something much more serious.
Perfect Ruin is really something else. It’s wholly original and something I haven’t really seen in YA fiction before. However, I really think this is something that only Lauren DeStefano could have been able to craft, and do so in a way that no one else would be able to attain.
- Caroline
Originally posted on The Attic blog.