Review: Endure by Carrie Jones

The Need series has been a guilty pleasure of mine since book one due to the highly entertaining dialogue, the very unique characters and story line Carrie Jones created. After all, pixies aren’t a paranormal creature I see a lot in the YA genre. Couple that with the use of Norse god mythology and you have a truly original series. All that being said, I do not think this was a strong conclusion, but I did still enjoy myself along the way.

Sometimes what I really dislike about reading a series while they are still being written is the lengthy waits. By the time I get to the next book, I can barely remember who each character is or their background. This is especially frustrating when the novel picks up directly or shortly after the last book ends. But Jones handles that fairly well with small recaps on the important info that happen in the previous novels. So even if it’s been a year or more since you’ve read Entice, rest assured that you will most likely be able to keep up just fine.

Endure opens with Betty still missing and Nick still not very accepting of Zara being a pixie. It’s a trying time for her and she has her share of FML moments, but I never thought they were over done. I think everyone is entitled to their own pity party when your boyfriend can stand the sight (and smell) of you. Zara and the gang have a lot on their plate in Endure since Frank is causing even more trouble trying to bring an end to the world. And then there is Astly, who Zara isn’t entirely sure how she feel about.  But unlike other heroines, Zara pushes her personal feelings aside to deal with the real matter at hand — saving the world. I loved that about her because for once we have a heroine that realizes they have a job to do instead of moping around crying about her love life. But this comes as no surprise to me as I have always loved Zara as a main character. She’s smart, compassionate (yet not to the point of having no self-preservation), and hilarious.

Still, there are a few things that irritated me a bit:

Nick — I really don’t know what happened to his character over the course of this series. But I don’t like it. To put it bluntly, he was an ass in Endure. Straight up. Zara went to Valhalla to rescue him. She changed into a pixie for him, which she was strongly opposed to at first, and what does the little prick do? He completely shuns her because she is different. Later in the novel, a situation arises where she becomes human again and he has the nerve to show interest in her! Thankfully, Zara is a smarter than the average bear and does not accept his advances.

The Norse mythology — It went right over my head. At first it was interesting in the pervious books because it’s not often done, but it got more and more complicated. This book is only 262 pages and I don’t think that was enough time to properly explore it fully. Somehow Zara is the key to stopping the apocalypse by freeing Loki, but then she’s not supposed to free Loki because that actually starts the apocalypse?? I was very confused. I don’t even think the characters knew what they were talking about. In fact, it’s pretty clear they didn’t considering the Norse gods were always correcting them on their information. Their response?

It seemed like a rather convenient excuse to explain away things that aren’t fully explained in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s pretty accurate for modern teens to find out everything they need to know from the University of Google. But it’s another thing entirely for them to fully believe everything they read as much as was done in Endure. It was like:

“Oh noz! How do we stop the apocalypse?”

*fires up Google*

*answer found*

*world saved*

Go on and push it. I know you want to… 

The Ending — It really felt like Jones was just on a mission to hurry up and end the series. Overall I’m happy with the ending, but not the process in which it arrived there. But I really believe that it mostly comes back to things being a little too convenient for Zara and her friends.

However, even with those issues and not fully understanding the how everything connected together, I still was able to enjoy the novel. As for who Zara ends up with, well, let’s just say I think fans will be very happy with the outcome. I know I was. 😉

ARC was provided by Bloomsbury via NetGalley. Thank you!