Review: The Offering by E.R. Arroyo

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Published April 6th 2014 by Createspace (first published March 25th 2014)

My Rating: 5 Stars

Source: Copy provided by author for review

From Goodreads:

Consumed by guilt from a war she started, Cori faces the aftermath of her destruction. The Mercy colony is in shambles as infection spreads and Dylan struggles to find a cure before it’s too late. Cori’s love and loyalties are put to the test when he asks her for the unthinkable. Now faced with impossible decisions, Cori must risk her friends and everything she’s ever cared about in order to put things right. She’ll go to unimaginable lengths to save the innocent, no matter the cost.


My Thoughts 

While I certainly enjoyed Sovereign quite a bit, The Offering simply blew me away. First, I need to explain that for me to have a book be a complete five-star, it must do three things: (The obvious) be a great book,make me feel some strong emotions, and be hard to get my mind off of. I finished The Offering on Sunday, and teared up in the car about it today. So yeah, it applies. While reading, I laughed, I definitely cried, and I actually outright gasped while reading, and I truly cannot remember the last time I have had a book make me do that. Usually, the twists and turns are kind of predictable for me, mainly because I read a lot of the same genre. But no, there were surprises in this one that I absolutely did not see coming, and I loved it! I often miss that element of surprise, but there was no lack of that for me in The Offering.

The characters became even more developed, and I couldn’t help falling in love with The City as a whole, but especially Tyce and Eli. We learn a lot more about Cori and the other characters, as well as the world they live in. A lot of things I’d wondered about were answered in this book, and if they weren’t, there was generally a good reason why they weren’t. We learn all this while immersed in the action and plot, and the whole book just flows beautifully. No boring parts, no awkward chapters, just great movement with the right amount of action and twists, intertwined with lighthearted moments and moments of humanity.

The whole book was good, but the second half was pretty much epic for me. The plot keeps moving, twisting, turning. I hated for the book to end, because I knew it was the end. And the ending… the all important ending. It’s funny, I have never had a favorite book in which I didn’t actually like the ending before. But truthfully, I had hoped it would go a different way. But the thing is, it ended so poignantly, so gracefully, so appropriately, and provided me with the necessary closure while maintaining realism.

I quite obviously recommend this whole series, it is definitely among my all-time favorites.

Five heart-wrenching, amazing stars!

Posted April 24, 2014 by Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight in Review , / 2 Comments

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2 responses to “Review: The Offering by E.R. Arroyo

  1. At first glance then I thought it was The Offering by Kimberly Derting, and then thought did they change the cover? Haha. I love books that can make you feel so many emotions in such a little time, and love when it’s unique too. Especially, like you said, so many in the same genre have the same template it’s hard for it to separate itself from the rest, which it sounds like it does. And gives you surprises, I hate when it’s predictable. You know, I do hate when books don’t end the way you want them to, but taking in context what the books about, how the characters are and their situation, realistically it’s not going to end perfectly. But, I do really respect books that go there and do that, that it might not end happily ever after or the way you want it to, but it’ll give you closure. 🙂 I’m definitely going to have to check it out! Glad you loved it so much!

    • When I got the first book, it was free on Kindle, so definitely worth checking out! I definitely had so many emotions with this book, but I think that is part of what made me love it- no, it didn’t end the way I wanted it, but that’s kind of how life is in general. Kind of made it even more real, I guess. Either way, I am still ruminating on it days later, so it definitely had an impact for sure! I had seriously fallen in love with some of the characters!

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