Candidate (The Black Mage, #3)

Candidate
By: Rachel E. Carter
My rating: ★★★★★

(I received this book as an ARC free from the Author in exchange for my honest review.)

My heart is broken, good god woman why? Just why!? Oh my dear Rachel, you know what I’m talking about and my poor little heart has been shattered by your author powers and the god like ability, to off people because you can. Not only that, the ending! I sat there starring at my phone for five minutes trying to swipe left, convinced there was another page. My co-worker looked at me like I was touched in the head. Oh my heart, it still hurts and my mind is filled with the horror that I have to wait for the last book. I'm petrified and excited for the blood and sorrow that is to come.

Oh okay rant over, on to the review.

There is a horror that we as readers face when reading a series, that freighting sickening feeling that the next book in line will not be as good as its counterpart. No matter how good the series is, we all have this fear that it will suck and, I’ll have simply wasted my time and energy. This, was not the case for Candidate. I have never read a series that has managed to top, no, set a new standard each time an instalment is released. Out of the three, this book has risen the bar so high that I’m almost scared to read the final book. More so because, for the first time in a long time I cannot predict what is going to happen. The twists a turned in this book had me putting it down so my feels wouldn’t explode and kill me in my sleep. To have a book affect me so; is what reading is about. It is the reason I read, and the reason why authors write.

There are raw emotions oozing out of every page of this book. From the first page untie the last. The growing relationship between Darren and Ryiah, though I wasn’t a hug fan of them at the start, had me so invested that whenever they fought I was crushed. Somehow the fungus, that grew into a mushroom, got pass my defences and cause me to care about him like a stray, ugly beat up cat that will not leave you alone, and you just can’t help but fall. Well F*uk, is all I can say about that.

I was once again drawn in by Ryiah herself. Her resolve and her fight to try and best her one true love, miraculous. I loved how she didn’t buckle like other YA heroin’s (can we call this YA anymore?). I love how strong she has become, but, at the end, I can’t even fathom the choice she had to make, because to be honest, I would not be as strong. Her final choice, I don’t know how well it will pan out, but as something I learned coming off a leadership course, make a decision and stick with it. She did just that, and in my eyes, she is a true leader and will enact change whether she realized it or not.

This book was full of dark corners and, we were let in on a few family secrets and why something’s are the way they are. I don’t think I have ever been so blindsided by a plot before. The conclusions I was making while I reading, were crushed before I was done fully constructing them, either by a single word, or the end of a chapter. This book will truly outlast time.

There are so many things I can say, write, about how my mind was blown into another F’en universe. So I will leave you with this. Read this series, it is fresh, original, and to me sets a new standard for YA writing, that all should look at, talked about. It has broken the cookie cutter mould that has been riddling YA for years. The stigma has been broken.

I would like to thank Rachel E. Carter for letting me experience this earth shattering read. I can’t wait for the final instalment, my heart may not take it, but I need to know how this war will end. Will it have the happy ending that Ryiaha and Darren dream of, or will Ryiaha’s resolve shattered that bubble, and crumble any and all hope.

PS. I can't stress this enough, but you need to read this series, there is nothing out there like it, and nothing can top the magic that has been created by it.

Happy Reading

-E.A. Walsh