Renee Lim

I wanted to give this book 0 stars, but that's not an option so I settled for 1. Let’s start this off by talking about one of KOTLC’s most crippling issue: its character development. Think about it; how exactly have any of the main characters in this series changed? The answer is that they either haven’t, it’s been forced, or it’s been practically nonexistent. I could spend all day listing how all the characters(except Keefe and Bronte) have had crappy development, but I’m just going to talk about two characters or else this rant would be longer than the actual series. Stina: Yes, I’m saying Stina had terrible character development. Why? Stina had ZERO screen time in this series where we saw her change. Did she change? Yes, but where was the reasoning for this? When did we ever see her struggle? When did we ever see her reasoning for being a terrible person in the first place? We just haven’t, which automatically makes her development terrible since it just came out of nowhere. Biana: Same story as Stina. She just changed out of nowhere. You could argue that she developed when Sophie + Dex were kidnapped. Ok, but did we see her struggle with her feelings while they were gone? No, so that barely counts. You could also argue that she changed by showing off her scars in Legacy. This is even worse development. We didn’t see her struggle with her self-confidence or scars AT ALL before this. It was only briefly mentioned ONCE in Flashback that she wore long sleeves, but other than that there was absolutely nothing. On top of this, Biana never even expressed her feelings about her scars. So yeah. The character development in KotLC is just... bad. Sophie is a terrible character I’m not even going to talk about her nonexistent character development because then we’d be here all day. I’m just going to say it: Sophie’s existence is holding this series back. Before you jump on me, allow me to elaborate. Sophie’s POV: The fact that KOTLC is told entirely from the POV of Sophie(until recently) may be the reason why there’s so little character development in this series. In other words, since we only see what Sophie sees/thinks, we lose out on time with the other characters(as well as their perspectives)since Sophie usually only hangs out with you-know-who. The Mary Sue Debate(+ Sophie is a terrible person): Honestly? I think Sophie is a Mary Sue, at least by one of the more typical definitions. She can do no wrong, she’s talented at everything, and she’s a special snowflake even among the very special elves. You could argue that she isn’t one because she constantly loses, but that doesn’t mean anything when none of the other characters place the blame on her for losing(because again, Sophie can do no wrong). But Sophie does have some serious faults. For example, as some other users have mentioned, Sophie’s a toxic friend and girlfriend. She constantly neglects everyone in favor of hanging out with Keefe, apologizes when confronted, but then goes right back to ignoring them again. Sophie freaking ignored Tam’s kidnapping and instead worried about her matchmaking situation. I don’t think I need to explain why this makes her a terrible person. The worst part is that Sophie will never change because either SM or the other characters see no issues with Sophie’s behavior.