Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 7: Flashback by Shannon Messenger

Summary from Goodreads:

In this unforgettable seventh book, Sophie must let the past and present blur together, because the deadliest secrets are always the ones that get erased.

Sophie Foster doesn’t know what—or whom—to believe. And in a game with this many players, the worst mistake can be focusing on the wrong threat.

But when the Neverseen prove that Sophie’s far more vulnerable than she ever imagined, she realizes it’s time to change the rules. Her powerful abilities can only protect her so far. To face down ruthless enemies, she must learn to fight.

Unfortunately, battle training can’t help a beloved friend who’s facing a whole different danger—where the only solution involves one of the biggest risks Sophie and her friends have ever taken. And the distraction might be exactly what the villains have been waiting for.

Review:

I’m still obsessed with this series but…..I didn’t love this book as much as the last two. I still flew through the whopping 845 pages in a matter of days. However, the first half of the book took place in the healing center at Foxfire where both Sophie and Fitz were recovering from serious injuries. They were both kind of tortured and dealing with the awful aftermath of something called shadowflux. Nothing like boring, dragging, dramatic Sofitz time to slow a girl’s love a series down.

They dragged their cots close together…So much looking into each other eyes. Also, it was never actually addressed further, but it was seriously alluded to that Fitz’s dad asked Keefe to back off from Sophie! Like excuse me? This is how deep my shipping is going…I’m like shaking as I type this….So while, Keefe actually does back off (for other reasons!) and there is so much whining about recovering, like SO MUCH whining, I debated why I loved this series so much.

And then finally, they characters get out of the healing center….and I remembered why. There’s new characters, new missions, more meetings with evil villains, and lots of more training to fight said evil villains. Sophie now has five bodyguards, (1 from each species except human). A lot is learned about the Vackers, and trolls. Alliances are formed. Through it all, I kept wanting Keefe to make more appearances…I have not given up hope. Oh, and there’s alicorn babies to protect now.

I like that the characters are getting tougher. They are focusing on training. They want to learn how to fight. They used to complain about training and doing anything that required work and practice, but now they finally understand that there are things they need to learn to get better at. They also all seem to be growing more empathetic and understanding of others (other species, cultures, and elves with different abilities). Sophie does seem to have this innate ability to bring everyone together. All of her bodyguards seem to love her. Even the boys she turns down still agree to be friends with her. She’s leadership material for sure. I really feel like I know these characters now. I’ve gotten to know and love (most of) them.

I have to ask: how can she possibly have any eyelashes left? She’s always pulling them out. She literally pulls them out whenever she’s stressed, which is practically all of the time. How does she have any left?

I wish like a quarter of this book didn’t happen. So much of what transpired in the Healing Center was a drag, and did not need to be here. It almost stopped my reading of this series I’ve become so obsessed with. Why were there no editors, trimming this down? And can someone save her eyelashes? I give this one a 7/10.