Week 21 Review: Wings of Ebony

From Goodreads:

In this riveting, keenly emotional debut fantasy, a teen girl from Houston has her world upended when she learns about her godly ancestry—and with evil sinking its claws into humans and gods alike, she'll have to master her abilities to save both her worlds.

Rue's family is her whole life, and East Row, the Houston neighborhood she calls home, is her world. But then the unthinkable happens. Rue's mom is murdered, and a father she's never met snatches her away from her sister. Now Rue is far away from everything she knows, trapped in her father's home, Ghazan, a secret country of gods.

Rue is the first half-god, half-human here, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother's death, Rue breaks Ghazan's most sacred law: she returns to Houston, only to discover that drugs flood the streets, black kids are being forced into crime and violence, and her sister, Tasha, is in danger of falling sway to the very forces that claimed their mother's life.

Worse still, evidence mounts that the evil plaguing East Row is the same one that lurks in Ghazan—an evil that will stop at nothing until it has stolen everything from her. Rue must embrace her true identity and wield the full magnitude of her ancestors' power to save her neighborhood before the gods burn it to the ground.

My Review:
This was a really fantastic read! It took me a chapter or two to get into, but once I did, wow, did it take off, and I got sucked into this amazing world with this story that I just couldn't put down! I loved reading Rue's story! 

So this world of magic, of a group of so-called gods on an island that nobody knows about, was pretty interesting! But that Rue is half human, that her mom was human, and her dad isn't. And that's a culture shock for her, or maybe she's a culture shock to those on Ghazan. 

Near the end, I got really frustrated with her friend. She kept making things about herself, kept missing the point that Rue was trying to make. And it's easy to see how that compare to experiences of Black people in the real world, which just all around I wish things were better, that this struggle didn't exist at all, because it's just not fair, and I'm not even the one experiencing it, I can only read accounts like this of those that do. 

There were plenty of emotional moments. When we learned about the big twist of this world, about the magic, what happened. Of some pretty tense moments with her dad. And maybe some romance, maybe the beginnings of a love triangle? Or maybe I'm reading into things here...

This was a read that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I can't wait to see where things go in book 2! 

Author: J. Elle
Series: Wings of Ebony #1
Read: May 24th, 2021
Source: NetGalley 
Reason Why: Sounded really good, and it's a DAC Book, Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2021 Book and a WoW Book!
Publisher: Denene Millner Books/Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: January 26th 2021

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars