Book Review: Grave Mercy

TITLE: Grave Mercy
Book 1 in the His Fair Assassin Trilogy
AUTHOR: Robin LaFevers
PUBLISHED: 2012
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Historical fiction, adventure, romance
PREMISE: A girl is trained to be a assassin by a convent but her first assignment is more difficult then she ever imagined...
MY REVIEW: Let me guess, a lot of you thought I would love this book, right? Well, for a large part I did enjoy it. I think it's one of the stronger debuts of this year that I've read so far. Not that this is saying much mind you, I've been slightly disapointed by this years batch of new writers. There've been good books sure, but none I've fell in utter love with yet.
I like Grave Mercy and definitely recomend it, but it's got its problems. First it requires a LOT of suspension of disbelief. You have to believe that nuns would train girls to kill for instance. Yeah, took awhile to wrap my head around that one and after awhile I just gave up and enjoyed the journey the premise gave instead. It is a nice premise. A bit predictable for my taste (I've read much fanfic like this, sorry to say), and I'll admit much of the middle dragged and needed to be cut. Plus the author's writing, while nice descriptive wise and character developement wise, had a bad habit of telling instead of showing and needed quite a bit of polishing.
But for the most part, this was a fun romp. It's got action, intrigue, romance, complications, and basically anything you can think of that would make a entertaining read. I will definitely pick up the next book and rec this especially for fans of Graceling. It's definitely reminded me of that book a lot.
WHO SHOULD READ: Graceling fans, Tamora Pierce fans,
MY RATING: Four out of Five crossbows