Playing Catch Up! The Black Key by Amy Ewing

Playing Catch Up has really been helping me through my ever growing TBR list. I'd like to welcome all other blogs to participate too! If you do, be sure to post your links in the comments section. I'd love to see your Playing Catch Up Reviews, and I'm sure others would too!! *wink*

Want to know more about Playing Catch Up? I'll tell you all about it here!

The Black Key (The Lone City #3) by Amy Ewing
Genre: Young Adult (Dystopian Romance)
Date Published: October 4, 2016
Publisher: HarperTeen

For too long, Violet and the people of the outer circles of the Lone City have lived in service to the royalty of the Jewel. But now the secret society known as the Black Key is preparing to seize power.

And while Violet knows she is at the center of this rebellion, she has a more personal stake in it—her sister, Hazel, has been taken by the Duchess of the Lake. Now, after fighting so hard to escape the Jewel, Violet must do everything in her power to return to save not only Hazel, but the future of the Lone City.

The Black Key is the third and final book in The Jewel trilogy by Amy Ewing. This one didn't keep my attention as well as the previous two books, which is sad since it's the last book in the trilogy. I expected Violet to really come into her own during this book. She needed to, but I don't feel like she did. In ways, I feel she caused more harm than good, and that was disappointing.

There was all this build up through most of the story, and I was expecting something big to go down. But it all fell a little flat for me in the end. I mean, all the loose ends that I can thing of were tied up, but I guess the ending just felt too rushed to me. I almost feel like I missed something, it all happened so fast. I don't know. I can't put a finger on it. Something still feels unfinished though.

It’s warm inside the greenhouse, the air thick with the scent of growing things, earth and roots and flowers. The rain patters gently as Raven and I wait.
At precisely five seconds past midnight, I can just make out hooded shapes hurrying across the courtyard. Then the door to the greenhouse opens and the group of girls we’ve been waiting for floods in.
“Violet!” some of them whisper, rushing over to greet me and Raven.
Amber Lockring strides forward, throwing back the hood of her cloak, her eyes gleaming. “Right on time,” she says with a grin.
“Five seconds late, actually,” Raven points out.
Amber wasn’t one of our friends here, though she lived on our floor. Raven confessed that Amber called me a freak on my first day at Southgate and Raven bent her arm behind her back until Amber said she was sorry. They had never liked each other after that. When we got the list of girls going to the Auction, Raven immediately chose Amber as the first one to reveal this secret to. When I asked why, she narrowed her eyes and said, “She hates the royalty just the way I did. And she was the only other girl in our dorm who wore pants.”
I had to smile at that. If they hadn’t hated each other so much, they might’ve been friends.
“You brought them?” I say.
Amber gestures proudly to the figures still huddled by the door, three girls with varying expressions of fear and suspicion on their faces. “Tawny, Ginger, and Henna. They’re the last ones. This is all of us going to the Auction.”
I do a quick head count. Only nine out of the seventy-seven girls at this year’s Auction are from Southgate. And they stand before me now.
“Did anyone see you?” Raven says.
Amber snorts. “No. Obviously. I have done this before, you know.”
“Great job,” I say.
“Ready?” Raven mutters.
I step forward.
It’s time to show these girls who they really are.

Check out my reviews of the other books in this series!

Amy Ewing is the young adult author of The Jewel, the first in a trilogy from HarperTeen, coming out September 2014.

She grew up in a small town outside Boston, where her librarian mother instilled a deep love of reading at a young age. Amy moved to New York City in 2000 to study theater at New York University. Unfortunately, her acting career didn’t quite pan out. She worked in restaurants, as an administrative assistant, a nanny, and a sales representative for a wine distributor before the lack of creativity in her life drove her to begin writing.

Amy received her MFA in Creative Writing for Children from The New School, where she was lucky enough to meet a fabulous community of YA writers who keep her sane on a daily basis. She lives in Harlem, where she spends her days writing, eating cheese, and occasionally binge watching The Vampire Diaries.

To learn more about Amy Ewing and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.