Hidden by Sophie Jordan

I got this ARC at the RT Booklovers Convention. It doesn’t come out until 9/11/12.  It’s the third and final installment to the Firelight trilogy. I had a ball reading these books by Sophie Jordan! The whole dragons-can-sometimes-be-human-idea is fantastic! There’s dragons, love triangles, crazy societies, hunters, fire breathing, twin sisters, flying, and so much fighting for what is right. What’s not to love? It took me a little longer to read this book than I thought it would, but I think part of it was because I had a feeling for how it would end, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it to go there.

Any way, it starts immediately after book two finishes. Jacinda, Will, and Cassian go right into their plan for rescuing Cassian’s annoying sister.  And the plan is for Jacinda to go in as bait. After a long, painful day as bait (where Jacinda witnesses all the other draki (aka: dragons) who have slowly been experimented on and tortured, she and her friends manage to infiltrate the system, save Cassian’s sister, and free the other draki.

And this is only the very beginning of the book…So much happens in this one. Things are found out about Jacinda’s father. They meet some interesting new draki, including a love interest (finally) for Tamra (Jacinda’s twin). After the escape, the teens are running for their lives, constantly being followed by hunters. And soon, Jacinda figures out that one of them has a locating chip in their head! All the scenes with just Jacinda, Will, and Cassian were fabulous. And it becomes clearer and clearer that there is no triangle. It’s just Will. Though, there’s a lot of arguments between Jacinda and Will about Jacinda always picking her pride (which she hates) over him. And I thought this was so real and interesting to read about!

The gang eventually has to return to the pride. There’s the matter of saving one girl, getting revenge/justice, and helping a new friend. Things change quickly for the draki society. There’s one crazy, full-out battle between the pride and the hunters. There’s some death, a lot of injuries, and definitely a broken heart or two. I’m not going to spoil the end. Just know that it was full of action, realizations, and awesome!

I loved this book! I did predict all the major plot points, and at first this was irritating, but then it wasn’t. Jordan writes the predictable well. I just got so c aught up in the romance and the action, that the predictability took the way back seat. The romance between Jacinda and Will was so hot! I loved how things ended for Jacinda’s pride.  And I love how brave and loyal Jacinda was. She’s such a great main character!

There were two things that really bothered me though. One, was the whole death being taken back thing. One character seemed to have really died, but then it turns out, didn’t. And I hate when authors do this because it makes me feel so stupid for believing it. But then Jordan did this again with another character. And after two characters weren’t dead, I found myself kind of angry, and not very trusting. What about the other characters who are believed dead? Is everyone fair game? Was the author too afraid to kill major characters? I just thought doing this twice was overkill. Once was acceptable, but twice just made me loose too much faith in everything in front of me.

And the second thing that kept nagging at me was this: why was it such a big deal for the humans not to know that dragons were also human? I wanted them to know so bad! While I don’t think all hunters/creepy torturers would stop what they were doing, it would make them all re-evaluate something about their jobs. And why is this so bad?

There are a few times (between the first book and this one) where people see that dragons are people, and then I was always like, “Yes! Finally!” But then the dragons would conveniently erase the knowledge from people’s brains. It was kind of like the author killing people, and then bringing them back. I kind of think the story would have been more interesting if stuff wasn’t always being taken back. Bad things can happen in books, and when they keep getting taken back, I feel like I’m getting a sugar-coated version of the real story.

Besides the stuff being taken back, I did really love this one. I was hooked from the action of the first pages. And I probably would have read it even if there was no action because the romance was just that good! I give it a 8/10. And I will definitely keep my eyes open for more things from this author.