Review: Sword of the Seven Sins by Emily Colin

*We received this book in exchange for an honest review.*

Life in the Commonwealth isn’t easy for Eva Marteinn. When it’s her turn to be chosen for a career path, Eva is picked as the first female Bellator — warriors who she sees as no more than killers. Suddenly, she’s moved into a world of training, weapons and always having to be one step ahead.

Ari Westergaard never expected to have to train Eva. He’s had a crush on her since they we’re children. However, relationships are completely forbidden in the Commonwealth. Romance is a form of a corruption and all children are born of surrogate parents to be raised by a handful of “mothers.”

Ari and Eva try to keep things professional, but the closer they become, the more difficult is to keep pretending they don’t want to be together. To make things more complicated, the rebels who live in the borderlands are getting stronger. They want Ari and Eva to leave the Commonwealth and join them. The two have to decide if they want a safe and boring future inside the walls, or risk getting hurt in the borderlands, but having a chance to be together.

We literally had no idea what to expect when we received this series in the mail. It’s been forever since we’ve read a YA dystopian series and we were super excited to get back into this genre. Originally, it gave us a bit of Divergent vibes just because people are given a career path based on strengths. However, this book got even darker.

The world building was excellent, especially at the beginning. We got a taste for the Commonwealth, without it being too detail heavy. The society punished people for almost everything, including checking out too many books at the library or taking more food than allowed. We’re guessing book bloggers would not do well in this world!

Character wise, we enjoyed reading both Eva’s and Ari’s POVs equally. They both had interesting observations and faced a lot of danger. We do wish we got to see more of Eva’s feeling for Ari, considering he described the romantic moments that they shared. However, we shipped them from the beginning and enjoyed their slow burn relationship.

Now, the ending! The last few chapters are packed full of non-stop excitement. Without spoiling anything, we loved the surprises at the end, especially about what Eva will do next. Colin did a great job building suspense.

Overall, we enjoyed the adventurous story in Sword of the Seven Sins. With autumn coming soon, it felt like the right time of year for a dystopian series. We can’t wait to see what Eva and Ari do next in Siege of the Seven Sins.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐