TL;DR typical "warrior girl in disguise" tropes
TBR #748, added Jan 22 2014
finished 8/08/16
I've had this book since late 2014. My friend gave me a copy her sister was getting rid of, and I let it sit in my room for a year and a half. I finally got around to finishing it because I returned all of my library books.
I initially was pretty indifferent towards Defy, but now I'm leaning more towards contempt. (Especially now that I found reviews on Goodreads that articulate better than I do. Read some of the top one-star reviews.) I think it might've been more enjoyable if I'd read it closer to when it was published and the tropes weren't as old. The experience was okay enough but it wasn't compelling, and I spent a lot of the time going "really? This is as good as we're getting?"
The biggest issue I have with Defy is that Alex thinks she's keeping her secret so well, and then it turns out that she didn't and never got wind of it for three years. If it was apparently that easy to figure out, then why didn't she get busted beforehand?? There were also a couple plot-twist secrets regarding other people that weren't surprising. They were just kind of "... oh. All right. Moving on." (Also, how the hell did Alex survive living with a dozen guys and not let on for three years about her shark week? Periods are a pain in the ass still. There's no way she survived well in their medieval (??) world even if she weren't passing for a guy.)
There's also the oh-so-dreaded love triangle, and honestly, I didn't like either of the guys. Neither of them were all that interesting and I don't think they would've been all that good for her. I think the story could've been stronger without the romance; there was such a good setup for familial / platonic love and it kind of got ditched. The romance also overtook any of the real danger that they were supposed to be in during the second half of the book and I got tired of it real fast.
The worldbuilding was also lackluster, and for all the horrors of their kingdom, how did all the other guys in the guard turn out so nice? I can't really imagine why only the king and his right-hand guy would be absolute jerks and not have that pass on to anyone else. Their kingdom obviously doesn't value women for anything more than their bodies. Why are the rest of the guys so nice to Alex once they know? (I have arguments about the breeding house, but other people on Goodreads have already articulated that so much better, so I will defer to them.)
All the events in general felt too convenient for the plot. Nothing really felt like coincidence, and Alex was not the brightest or most sympathetic heroine. I never really felt like I was rooting for her -- I got the feeling she would get her way no matter what the odds looked like. That doesn't make for a very interesting book.
All that said, it wasn't terrible to get through. I don't feel like I regret the time I spent reading, but I doubt I'm ever going to re-read it again, and I don't have much curiosity about the events after the end of the first book. The description for the second book is really uninteresting and sounds no different from the first.
TL;DR I think I should bump my star rating down after writing this review lol. It's a decent read if you want a book for the sake of reading, but I don't think it was fulfilling like it could've been.
Reviews I liked on Goodreads: Khanh (the Grinch), Summer, Gillian, Sandra, and Ash Wednesday. And some others, but I think you get the point.
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