☆ Mira ✷'s Reviews > The Unbound

6 stars. The good sis Victoria Schwab has somehow gone and done it again. I love how every sequel she writes is like its predecessor but more thrilling, sexier, and a whole new level of hell. Basically, book 1 on crack.

So, for the approximately 3 people who don't know, Victoria Schwab is the best fantasy author in the modern world. The Archived is a duology she wrote before making it big. I don't know why this one wasn't as successful as her later books, as it's amazing! The protagonist, Mackenzie, is a ghost hunter who spends most of her time in a massive library. If that doesn't sell you, idk what will. :[

✨ Mackenzie is fabulous. A ghost hunter who fights like a boss and has a bike named Dante—how much cooler can you get? After the trauma she experiences in book 1, she's plagued by nightmares, stress, and self-doubt. She finds it ever harder to believe in herself and her strength. Yet she keeps fighting and refusing to succumb to a million different things. [I know this is vague, but really, a million.] In that regard, she's incredibly strong.

And there are some scary things happening to her. With frequent spells in which she awakens from a brief blackout with blood on her hands and no memory of the last few minutes, she becomes an unreliable narrator, adding to the book's overall spookiness and unpredictability.

✨ Wesley sure is interesting. He is Mackenzie's friend who they both wish was a boyfriend. And he's basically Alucard Emery with less innuendo. He and Mac just go around bantering, reading The Inferno together, and forming a deep emotional connection [aka what I'm all about].

Wes hits the table. "You broke into a crime scene without me?"

"Be glad, Wes, or we both would have been caught."

"We're a team, Mac. You don't go committing a crime without your partner in crime. Besides, if I'd been with you, we probably wouldn't have been caught. I could have stood at the door and made wild bird sounds or something when the cops came back. And if we did get caught, our mug shots would look fabulous."

He sneaks into her room at night through the window just to help keep her nightmares away, and if that's not cute as hell then nothing is.

✨ Owen Chris Clarke is the scary ass villain. He is Victoria at the top of her antagonist game. His motives are incredibly well developed; we understand him and his specific actions. I wish that more fantasy villains were 3D like this [or more accurately, 4D]. He's also constantly wielding a knife and screwing with Mackenzie's mind/life/sanity. Ugh, so fabulously evil.

✨ The plot—wow. Thrilling from start to finish. I'm in awe. If I wanted to be an author, I'd just give up right here and now because there's no way my plot twists could ever compare to Victoria's. I genuinely didn't see a single twist coming, and there were a million levels of delicious drama and intrigue.

✨ The setting remains wonderfully aesthetic. Mackenzie lives primarily in a massive apartment building steeped in history and lots of interesting neighbors. And her family's newly opened bakery & coffee shop on the ground floor. [All the coffee being drunk in this book made my day.] But she spends much of her time stepping through the portal into the Archive, an enormous library where the dead rest on shelves like books. I wanna be a ghost hunter so I can go there, except for the part where I'd probably get killed 15 minutes into the job.

✨ The fight scenes are, since it's Victoria "The Secret MMA Fighter" Schwab, totally epic. I'm not always big on fight scenes that don't involve magic, but WOW. I'd fill up half of my Schwab reviews with discussions of the fight scenes, but then everyone would probably unfollow me, so let me just briefly say that I could pick a combat scene written by her out of a lineup. Apparently they're her favorite type of scene to write; she likes letting readers learn about characters through how they fight. And I believe it.

Apparently there's a complicated possibility of a third book, and I'd love that! There's a metric ton of potential for more action and drama. However, I'm satisfied with the way everything wrapped up, so if you're a Schwab fan, don't bother waiting for book 3 to come out.

Anti-complaint: In the beginning, there appears to be a possible love triangle and a Pretty Mean Girl in gym class who will be narratively punished for being Pretty and Mean. But don't worry; neither happens.

[oh, and can we talk about how that scene where Mac fights Wesley upon unexpectedly seeing him in the gym and they exchange frustrated banter as they wrestle gave me MAJOR flashbacks to Kell and Lila's first interaction in A Gathering of Shadows]

Bottom line: Awesome heroine. Twisty plot twists. Terrifying, 3D villain. Spooky thriller vibes. Signature Schwab greatness. You do want to read this series.