Last of Her Name by Jessica Khoury | Book Review

Title: Last of Her Name

Author: Jessica Khoury

Series: N/A

Genre: Young Adult, Sci-Fi, Retelling, Romance

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Publication date: February 26th, 2019

Pages: 389

My rating:

---

Sixteen years ago, rebellion swept the galaxy known as the Belt of Jewels. Every member of the royal family was murdered–down to their youngest child, Princess Anya–and the Union government rose in its place. But Stacia doesn’t think much about politics. She spends her days half-wild, rambling her father’s vineyard with her closest friends, Clio and Pol.

That all changes the day a Union ship appears in town, carrying the leader of the Belt himself, the Direktor Eminent. The Direktor claims that Princess Anya is alive, and that Stacia’s sleepy village is a den of empire loyalists, intent on hiding her. When Stacia is identified as the lost princess, her provincial home explodes into a nightmare.

Pol smuggles her away to a hidden escape ship in the chaos, leaving Clio in the hands of the Union. With everything she knows threading away into stars, Stacia sets her heart on a single mission. She will find and rescue Clio, even with the whole galaxy on her trail.

“Way our here in Amethyne, we were supposed to be safe. We were supposed to be beyond all that, but now I wonder if I’ve been a fool to believe such a thing.”

I was so beyond excited to read this book because not only I’m low-key obsessed with Anastasia and anything that had to do with her story, but also because the movie is one of my all time favorites, so needless to say I went into this one with such high expectations, and though I think it was a solid book and there were a lot of things I enjoyed about this story, I guess my expectations were so high that this didn’t reach them.

Sci-fi isn’t a genre I tend to gravitate towards that often, so it took me a while to get a grip of the universe and the world building and everything. I was at first a bit confused with all that information, but I have to say that despite being a standalone we got to know a lot about this universe, the society and the magical elements, which was so surprising. I also really enjoyed the Prismatas and everything related to the prism. That plot line, though it came a bit too far in the story, was so interesting and unique, and I feel it added something special to the story.

Now the characters is where I had my issues with. The thing is, given that Anastasia is so close to my heart and my obsession with the tale, I tend to be quite harsh while reading a retelling about it, and though there was nothing wrong with the characters, I sometimes found Stacia quite annoying, to be honest. She was that type of character that didn’t make the greatest of decisions throughout the novel, and plus she had a personality that isn’t what I pictured when I think of Anastasia. This is such a personal me thing, but it affected me while reading the book.

“We become the monsters so the ones we love don’t have to.”

The romance was actually really cute. Though I feel there wasn’t enough room for it to fully grow and develop with everything else that was going on, and that made it sometimes appeared a bit rushed, I still think they were adorable together.

Overall, Last of her Name was a solid book, and I really enjoyed this world and science fiction elements that were in it, though it took me a bit to get into the story. It’s true that there were some things that were quite convenient and made the plot flowed a bit easier, but still it was good.

Follow me on BlogLovin’

Goodreads | Instagram | Twitter | Contact Me