Kass Morgan

Ever since I heard THE 100 was being turned into a TV show I made it my goal to read the book before the show premiered and time was running out.

When I first started the book and noticed that it was told from four different perspectives; Clarke, Wells, Bellamy, and Glass, I worried that it would be too confusing and I wouldn’t be able to connect with the characters. I was SO wrong! After just one chapter from each perspective the characters had already wormed their way into my heart. They show more are so young, yet they had all dealt with an incredible amount of heartbreak and tragedy in their pasts. My heart was constantly breaking for their pasts or swelling with hope for their futures.

I think it’s a pretty amazing feat on the author’s part that all four points of view were enjoyable & engaging. I was kind of expecting to at least hate one of them. My favorite chapters were the ones about Glass. Her & Luke’s relationship was just so heartbreaking & beautiful you couldn’t not root for them. My second favorite is a tie between Clarke & Wells which is ironic because their stories are basically one. My least favorite was from Bellamy.

Having four different points-of-view made the pages fly by! Each of the characters had done something in their past to get them confined and sent to earth. These reasons are slowly revealed to us piece by piece through flashbacks. Just as you start to discover the history of one character the POV would switch leaving you craving more but then sucking you right in to that character’s story as well. It was a vicious cycle that kept you constantly engaged and turning pages.

Unfortunately, the ending that should have come as a total shock didn’t because I had seen the TV show previews which kinda give too much away. Otherwise, it would have totally been a jaw dropper, but even so, it still was a cliffhanger. Let’s just say I’ll be the first in line for a copy of DAY 21 when it hits stores on September 16th! show less

First published at Booking in Heels.

The story is told in four alternating perspectives from different characters - Clarke, Wells, Bellamy and Glass. These chapters are very short, changing over very frequently, and usually feature some kind of flashback to the past. It actually works quite well as the story never gets stale and it can be interesting to read different perspectives of the same event. However, and I accept this may be a small point to most of you, I hate different fonts in one show more book. I understand that here it's used to differentiate between past and present, but there are other ways! I don't need a flashing sign to tell me that we're going to talk about the past now. It seems overly juvenile and unnecessary. It's a small point that hardly affects the quality of the book, but there you go. It irks me.

The story itself is very much dedicated to slowly unravelling the past. When the story opens, you know that these one hundred 'criminals' are there to recolonize the Earth, but not why the spaceships are desperate to do or so why the teenagers are criminals in the first place. All of the main four characters have secrets and a little more is revealed in every chapter. As a result, not a whole lot actually happens in the book, but that's alright. The discoveries seem to be the point of the novel more than any actual progression, but it works very well.

The 100 is immediately engrossing - it didn't take many pages at all for me to feel like I was 100% part of that story. The prose is actually pretty damn good - it flows very nicely and dialogue is natural and unstilted. Debut authors sometimes write in a very 'clunky' style, but here I wouldn't even be able to tell that Kass Morgan was new to the game. She writes like an experienced author and that can take a lot of skill.

My favourite chapters were those told by Clarke, although as a character she can be a little annoying and preachy. Her previous life is the most fascinating, involving a moral question that many of us would find different to answer. Wells is my favourite character, although his past is perhaps the most mundane. Of the lot, he's the most sensible and the obvious leader for the new colony. Bellamy needs to be strangled and Glass' situation is a little too... domestic. All in all though, there's a great mix of different personalities, emotions and circumstances and I never felt like I had to persevere through the 'boring' ones, simply because there weren't any.

The one thing that I can't get away from is the obvious resemblance to Lord of the Flies. This isn't a bad thing - hey, I loved that book - but I do think that some form of acknowledgement would have been nice. I accept that any book where young people end up stranded on an uninhabited beach could be said to have parallels, but this goes deeper. Opposing male leaders, something lurking in the night, a theoretical certainty of rescue... it's all there, minus the damn conch shell.

Like I said though, I don't really object to this. It works really well and fits in with the story perfectly. The ending is different, although the futuristic twist almost demanded it. I did see it coming, although it was a logical path for the story to take so I can't really complain.

I actually thought this was a stand-alone book, so now I'm quite frustrated that I have to wait for the next installment. I really enjoyed The 100 - isn't it great when a book you weren't sure about ends up being one of the best young adult books of the year? show less

This book could have easily gone the way of rote clichés and cheesy college drama, but instead I was pleasantly surprised at what a fun read it was. The story is set at the beginning of the school year on campus, and follows the arrival of new student Vivianne Devereaux and returning senior Scarlett Winter as the two are thrown together during Rush Week. The Greek world on campus has always been a slight fascination of mine, because we have no equivalent at Canadian universities (or at show more least not at the schools I attended), but what sets this book apart from other campus dramas is that the sisters in this sorority are also a coven of witches. Considering the closeness of the Greek houses and their love for ritual, this trope is actually a perfect counterpart and adds a fun layer of complexity to the tests and drama that are part of Rush Week and the bonds that eventually link the houses together. There’s still plenty of typical college drama (the new girl vying for her Big Sister’s boyfriend, parties, and tests for the new students), and the tone of the story sparks pleasant memories of one of my favourite tv shows from years ago: Greek! Just add some witchy vibes, spellwork, and an added layer of secrets and the drama felt particularly nostalgic. Besides the Rush Week storyline, we have a darker major plot that adds a lovely layer of mystery to the tale as the events of a spell gone wrong from years ago slowly begins to unravel the carefully built world that Scarlett and her friends (and the witches who have come before them) have built. The scenes that play out as the ramifications of their spells come to conclusion are far more gristly than you would expect from a college story, but add a deliciously dark undertone that is necessary for grounding the tale in the world of witchcraft. The spells and rituals in the story are realistically well representative of the craft, with familiar practices woven quietly into the storyline, aptly revealing both the comfort of coven life as well as the potential for evil as our new witch Vivi explores life with her newfound powers and Scarlett has to face her demons. show less

I don’t usually read sequels back to back (or even that close by), no matter how much I’m enjoying the series, for fear that I’ll end up with book burnout or that I’ll end up being disappointed that the continuation of the story doesn’t live up to its origins. But, one of my 2026 reading goals is to finish all the series that have been languishing on my TBR, and having just devoured The Ravens I felt obligated to make the trip back to campus alongside witchy sorority girls Vivi and show more Scarlett ASAP. The journey was well worth the trip, since we got another exciting story that is a perfect balance of college campus melodrama (which we secretly live for lol) and magical highjinx. This time the sisters are faced with a more supernaturally inclined foe, who ties back to the history of the Raven coven, and we get a glimpse of a wider magical world with the introduction of witchfinders - which definitely ups the narrative drama on all levels. We see Scarlett and Vivi face some major challenges, from self-inflicted doubt to a hostile takeover attempt from a rival sorority, before having to trust their bond as sisters to rebalance magic on campus. Morgan and Paige definitely had their work cut out for them with such a strong first novel, and they did admirably at building some new magic into the groundwork they had already laid, adding complications to the girls’ love interests, and bringing in the post-college world of magic (flawed though the apparent Monarchs seem to be). That being said, I feel like I enjoyed the first book more, simply because it kept things simple and all of the themes tied neatly back into reinforcing the sisterhood of the sorority/coven. But I still had fun reading the continued adventures of our favourite collegiate witches! show less