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Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Books for Young Readers for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: March 27th, 2018

464 Pages

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Anna Arden was once a magically barren girl from an elite Luminate family. Now she has broken the Binding—-and Praetheria, the creatures held captive by the spell, wreak havoc across Europe. Lower-class citizens have access to magic for the first time, while other Luminate lose theirs forever. Austria and Hungary are at odds once more.

Anna Arden did not know breaking the Binding would break the world.

Anna thought the Praetheria were on her side, content and grateful to be free of the Binding. She thought her cousin Matyas’s bloom sacrifice to the disarm the spell would bring peace, equality, justice. She thought her future looked like a society that would let her love a Romani boy, Gabor.

But with the Monarchy breathing down her neck and the Praetheria intimidating her at every turn, it seems like the conspiracies have only just begun.

As threat of war sweeps the region, Anna quickly discovers she can’t solve everything on her own. Now there’s only one other person who might be able to save the country before war breaks out. The one person Anna was sure she’d never see again. A bandit. A fellow outlaw. A man known as the King of Crows. Matyas.

At the end of Blood Rose Rebellion, I had mixed feelings regarding it, but there were enough positives that I thought I’d take a chance on the sequel, Lost Crow Conspiracy, and I’m glad I did. The book begins not long after where the previous one ended. Anna is facing more danger than ever and the only one she can trust is Gabor. I felt much more sympathy for her this time around, because she truly is caught in the middle both politically and personally.

Matayas is equally important to this story and the chapters alternate between him and Anna. Yet for some reason I found Anna’s perspective far more interesting and couldn’t stop myself from skimming through some of his chapters. Eventually though, his and Anna’s stories begin to link and this ceased to be an issue for me.

Although the pacing was a bit slow in the beginning, it picked up well before the halfway mark. And, I’m happy to say that while the other issues I had with Blood Rose Rebellion, concerning character development and world-building, weren’t fully resolved, they were appreciably better. One other positive I must mention is that the author truly has a beautiful writing style which helps keep your attention to the story even during the slower moments.

Overall, I’m quite happy with where Rosalyn Eves took her characters and story in Lost Crow Conspiracy, and I’ll definitely be reading the third book and final book. If you enjoy complex YA fantasy with loads of political intrigue I recommend checking this out.