Book Review: Animorphs #48, The Return
Happy Friday Eve Blogosphere!
This week’s almost over! I could dance in anticipation, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. I hope you have plenty of great things planned for your weekend and that you stay safe.
Anywho, I’m dropping this post because I finished reading another book. This time I read Animorphs #48, The Return by KA Applegate.
I definitely haven’t read this one before so I dove in, plenty excited to read another episode of Everybody Hates David (read the blurb, you’ll get it, haha!).
Blurb:
David, the “sixth Animorph,” is back. When the Animorphs and Ax decided to give another human being the power to morph, it was one of their biggest mistakes. David tried to destroy all of them–and almost succeeded. Rachel and the others thought they’d seen the last of him.
They were wrong.
Rachel knows what a threat David is. He’s cunning and dangerous. Worst of all, he knows their secrets. Now he’s captured Rachel as part of his plan to take over everything. David wants power. Money. But more than anything, he wants revenge.
GoodReadsÂ
The Review:
I gave this book three and a half stars.
This time around we’re in Rachel’s POV, my personal favorite. Rachel is going through some serious PTSD after all that she’s been through and battling her darker side. If that wasn’t enough, after a series of terrifying dreams, Rachel finds herself trapped underground in a cube. The culprit? David. Can Rachel figure a way out of this or will she have to negotiate with this selfish little rat (pun intended)?
This book was pretty good. I wanted to love it like all the other more recent ones (#45-47 has been a serious turning point), but there were a couple things that bugged me and dragged my score down a bit.
Let’s start with Rachel. I enjoyed reading her POV like always. I think the PTSD that was portrayed made sense. I mean, there’s only so many battles and questionable actions you can make before those actions catch up with you. I felt really bad for her, and I get where she’s coming from. At the same time, her personality felt off. A central theme this time was animosity towards Jake, but for me it didn’t work. Yes, they’ve had issues in the past with leadership and control of a situation, but ultimately they love each other because they are family. I didn’t feel that was portrayed. It just centered on the negativity of everything and her PTSD, but her love for her cousin would have still been a big factor in the decision-making process given her situation.
The plot was fun, a little bit more on the psychological thriller side given Rachel’s PTSD. But there is more at play than meets the eye, and that mystery was fun to be engaged in. At first, there didn’t seem to be a lot at stake besides Rachel’s fate, though that definitely changed as things went on. I particularly enjoyed Super-Rachel. I think her going through that really allowed her to see herself at her best and worst.
I will say, there was a point where she couldn’t morph that didn’t seem to make sense to me. I trailed back but couldn’t find an explanation, so I took off some starage for that. Also, in general I think this adventure was a smidgen disappointing given how everything is so ramped up now. We didn’t really get a sense of that in this book.
In the end, this book was a fun adventure. Yes, it was flawed, but it was still an important journey for Rachel to go through, and I enjoyed it. Worth a read if Rachel’s your favorite!
That’s a Wrap!
Thanks for stopping by, and happy reading!
Have you read this book before? What did you think? Do you have a book recommendation similar to this one? Feel free to share in the comments!
If you’d like to see other reviews of mine, feel free to check out the book review section of my blog or my GoodReads. You can also follow my GoodReads reviews here. There are some great binge-worthy books on there!
Have a great day!
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