Kassiah

3-1/2 stars.

Asunder picks up right after Incarnate ends, and we find Ana questioning her existence:

My life was a mistake.

As long as I'd been alive, I'd wanted to know why I'd been born. Why, after five thousand years of the same souls being reincarnated, my soul had slipped through the cracks of existence and burdened the people of Heart with such newness.

No one could tell me how I happened, not until the night I'd found my way into the temple with no door, trapping myself with the entity called Janan.

"Mistake," he'd said. "You are a mistake of no consequence."

I knew, as I'd always known, I was a soul asunder.

This book follows Ana and Sam as they try to figure out how to stop Janan with his evil plan while navigating through being together in spite of the scorn of most of their society. They enlist the help of friends, some new and some old, to discern what the clues she took from the Temple mean. When more newsouls are born, Ana feels like she has a real purpose.

"But it's not enough. You saw what happened in there. People were anxious to welcome back a friend, and then it was terrible. Within minutes, people were talking about killing him. If that's any indication of the rest of the city's reaction to his birth, when other newsouls start coming, there won't be anywhere safe. Not in the city. I need to make it safe. Somehow."

I wish that I could tell you more about what happens in Asunder, but I feel like I can't without being too spoilery. You know how it often is with second books--they feel like they're so transitory. That's how I felt about this book. A lot of stuff happens, but at the same time, it feels to me like the overall storyline didn't move forward.

I really loved Incarnate, especially how swoony Sam was and how much I loved him. I didn't get that in this book, and I didn't like this one as much. Fear not, Fictionees! There is some swoon:

I lost myself in the brush of his lips, the thrill of his fingers against my cheek and neck and shoulder, and thump of his heartbeat under my palm. So engaged in the way his mouth fit with mine, I almost missed the purr of my coat being unzipped. When he paused his kissing, I stepped back, and he slipped my coat off my shoulders; I dropped my arms and the cloth fell with a soft whump.

You know how I am about boys that unzip jackets. lol Something else that I liked was Ana's vulnerability when thinking about Sam being with other people in all of his other lifetimes.

I pressed my hands over my mouth as though I could smother the stab of hurt. Why couldn't Sam really be a boy my age, with no more experience than I had? No past lives, past loves.

Why couldn't he be only for me?

There are some things that I didn't like. I didn't like that I barely remembered what was going on. That's my fault, and I think if I had read Incarnate and Asunder back to back, I wouldn't feel that way. As it is, I know I'm going to have to read them both before the last book in the trilogy is released. There's something else, but it's majorly spoilery, so you'll have to highlight it to see it (I think):

Even after Sam tells Ana that he loves her, she cannot tell him that she feels the same way. She questions her ability to love throughout the entire book. To me, this doesn't work because Ana has always felt like she is more than just being a newsoul. Ana would know without question that she loved Sam, even if she was worried that he wouldn't think her feelings could be real. It was backwards to me, and really dampened my love for the book, the series, and especially Ana.

The world is still amazing, and I can't wait to read what happens in the conclusion.