Powerless by Lauren Roberts

-


⭐ POWERLESS — 4⭐ Review!

YA Fantasy for People Who Don’t Even Like Fantasy 😂⚡

Okay, confession time: fantasy and I are not besties.
I pick one up, and 9 out of 10 times I’m either bored, confused, or annoyed that the author made up twelve unpronounceable kingdom names just for fun.

But — BUT! — Powerless surprised me.

Is it wildly original? No.
Does half of it feel like The Hunger Games’ magical cousin? Absolutely.
Did I still fly through it? Yes. Yes I did.

The pacing is quick, the world is easy to follow (thank god), the characters are compelling, the tension stays steady, and the romance will absolutely have younger readers screaming into their pillows. This is YA written squarely for YA — and honestly, it works.

A very strong start to a series I can easily see millions of teens obsessing over.
4 out of 5 stars. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

⚠️ Trigger Warnings

(For my fellow sensitive readers — this one gets DARK.)

  • Genocide / systematic killing of Ordinaries

  • Graphic violence

  • Physical and psychological abuse

  • Murder

  • Torture

  • Panic attacks

  • Child abuse (implied via the Trials)

  • Discrimination / oppression

  • Death of loved ones

  • War / rebellion

  • Corruption / abuse of power

📚 Spoiler-Free Thoughts (Before We Dive Off the Deep End)

I went in skeptical, because YA fantasy isn’t usually my thing. But Powerless kept me engaged from the first chapter. The world is clear, the stakes feel real, and the book doesn’t waste time dumping lore on your head like a bucket of cold water.

There’s romantic tension, high-stakes survival games, siblings who are complete opposites, friendship, betrayal, and a heroine who is lying to literally everyone about everything — which is honestly my favorite personality trait in YA.

Okay. Ready?
Time for the spoilers.

🚨 SPOILER WARNING 🚨

Plot summary below contains ALL twists, ALL deaths, and the FULL ending.

🧭 Overview: What Is Powerless About?

Powerless is Book 1 of the Powerless Trilogy by Lauren Roberts, originally self-published after gaining traction on BookTok and later acquired by Simon & Schuster.

The story takes place in Ilya, a kingdom split between:

  • Elites (magical!)

  • Ordinaries (magicless! hunted! doomed!)

Our heroine, Paedyn Gray, is secretly an Ordinary pretending to be psychic.
Our hero, Prince Kai, is a powerful Elite trained to be an assassin.

Their lives collide, chaos ensues, and the kingdom promptly catches on fire.
Figuratively. (Mostly.)

🪄 FULL SPOILER PLOT SUMMARY

🖤 The World of Ilya

After a deadly plague, some survivors developed supernatural powers and became Elites. Everyone else? They became Ordinaries, who are now executed on sight because the government fears they’ll “infect” the magical population. (Casual dystopian genocide, love that for us.)

Paedyn Gray is an Ordinary living in the slums. Her father (murdered years ago) taught her to fake being psychic using nothing but observation skills.

Her best friend Adena is her only ally and the only person who knows her secret.

👑 Enter Prince Kai

Kai Azer, second-born prince, has a rare ability:
He can use anyone else’s power if he’s near them.

He’s being trained to be the future Enforcer — meaning assassin, executioner, and the king’s personal problem-solver.

Meanwhile, there is growing unrest across Ilya. A secret organization known as the Resistance has been working underground to expose the king’s brutality against Ordinaries and to upend the Elite-controlled government. They operate in cells, sabotage Imperial operations, and smuggle Ordinaries to safety. The royal family considers them terrorists; the oppressed consider them their only hope.

When Kai goes into the slums to investigate Resistance activity, he meets Paedyn (who steals his money 😂). They feel an instant spark but neither expects to see the other again.

⚔️ The Attack That Changes Everything

When Kai is ambushed by Resistance fighters — including a Silencer who suppresses powers — Paedyn jumps in and saves his life.

This draws attention to her “psychic ability,” which does not react correctly to the Silencer. Kai notices… and becomes suspicious.

But Paedyn’s small public act of heroism gets her selected for the Purging Trials, a deadly magical tournament normally reserved for powerful Elites.

She now has to:

  • Survive deadly magical obstacles

  • Pretend to have powers

  • Hide from the king

  • Not fall in love with Kai (oops)

🩸 THE TRIALS BEGIN

Trial One: Forest Survival Game

Contestants fight, steal armbands, and try not to die.
Paedyn and Kai reluctantly form an alliance.

They survive. Barely.

Paedyn Joins the Resistance

Back in the city, she secretly meets with the Resistance and promises to help them infiltrate the arena during the final Trial by finding a secret passage.

She manipulates sweet, kind Prince Kitt into showing her one.
(He deserved better, honestly.)

Trial Two: The Mountain Race

Paedyn and Kai end up fighting side by side again.

Kai kills Ace — the man who injured Paedyn earlier — while Paedyn wins the Trial.

Their attraction is now roughly the size of a small sun.

Trial Three: The Maze

This is where everything goes to hell.

Inside the enchanted maze, Paedyn finds Adena, chained, beaten, and used as bait.
The king knows Paedyn is an Ordinary.

Adena dies at the hands of Blair — another Elite contestant.

At the same moment, the Resistance breaches the arena… and a massacre erupts.

💔 THE BETRAYALS

🤯 Revelation #1: Kai killed Paedyn’s father

But not by choice.
He was forced to do it as part of his Enforcer training.

This shatters everything between them.

🤯 Revelation #2: The King orchestrated everything

The Trials, the tests, the cruelty — all designed to control the public and reinforce hatred for Ordinaries.

When Paedyn confronts him with the truth, she ends up killing the king.

🤯 Revelation #3: Kitt is now King

And guess what his first royal order is?

He sends Kai to hunt Paedyn down and kill her.

Kai obviously doesn’t want to — he lets her escape —
but duty vs love is clearly the setup for book 2.

🔥 ENDING

Paedyn escapes into the city.

Kai is sent after her.

War is coming.

And the love story is absolutely going to get messier before it gets better.

📈 Why Younger Readers LOVE This Series

  • Easy-to-understand magic

  • Fast pacing

  • Hunger Games–style Trials

  • Enemies-to-lovers tension

  • High emotional stakes

  • Rebellion, corruption, romance — the YA trifecta

Even for someone like me, who doesn’t swoon over fantasy, Powerless is genuinely fun.

📚 If You Liked Powerless, Try These!

✨ Fourth Wing — Rebecca Yarros
✨ The Hunger Games — Suzanne Collins
✨ These Violent Delights — Chloe Gong
✨ The Prison Healer — Lynette Noni
✨ Shatter Me — Tahereh Mafi
✨ This Woven Kingdom — Tahereh Mafi
✨ All of Us Villains — Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman
✨ Red Queen — Victoria Aveyard
✨ Divergent — Veronica Roth
✨ Shadow and Bone — Leigh Bardugo

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts This Week!

Beautiful Things by Emily Rath

-
Image
Beautiful Things (Second Sons #1) — ⭐⭐⭐☆☆ (3/5 Stars) Author: Emily Rath Series: Second Sons (Book 1) Genre: Regency Romance / Reverse Harem / Historical Romance ⚠️ TRIGGER WARNINGS Explicit sexual content Strong language (many, many F-bombs) Emotional manipulation Parental abuse (past) Classism Infidelity themes Power imbalance Alcohol use 🚨 FULL SPOILER WARNING 🚨 This review contains a complete, start-to-finish plot summary , including the ending and series setup. Proceed at your own risk. 😈📖 ✨ Overview: What Is Beautiful Things About? Beautiful Things is the debut novel from Emily Rath and the opening act of her Second Sons series. It’s a spicy Regency-era romance that blends Bridgerton-style aesthetics , modern dialogue, and an unapologetically horny heroine who inspires… intense devotion from nearly every man in her orbit. We follow Rosalie Harrow , age 22, broke, sharp-tongued, sexually confident, and freshly summoned to a duke’...
Read more

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

-
Image
  📚 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai — ⭐ 1.5/5 Stars Beautiful Writing, Chaotic Plot, and a Whole Lot of Boredom... Ohhhh I wanted to love this one. I really did. 😩 As an Asian American who immigrated to the U.S. , I went into this book READY. I was prepared for a deep, layered exploration of immigrant loneliness , cultural displacement , racism , and the quiet ache of trying to belong in a country that doesn’t quite see you. And at first? It delivered. But then… it just… unraveled. 🫠 For a novel that won awards and was shortlisted for major prizes, this felt wildly unfocused. The central love story between Sonia and Sunny? Lovely. Thoughtful. Tender. The problem? It’s buried under 600+ pages of side plots, ghosts, financial scandals, murder, Mexico, Venice, amulets, political lectures, sexual assault, lymphoma, and a demon dog. Yes. A demon dog. Let’s talk. ⚠️ Content & Trigger Warnings This book contains: Racism Gender discrimination Religious discriminatio...
Read more

Saving Noah by Lucinda Berry

-
Image
  📘 Saving Noah by Lucinda Berry – Book Review Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️  3 out of 5 stars A raw, unsettling read that forces us to confront the unthinkable—and asks us to consider what compassion really means. ⚠️ Spoiler Alert This review discusses major plot points, including the ending. Proceed with care if you haven’t read the book yet. 🧠 What Saving Noah Is Really About This is not an easy book. It’s not meant to be. Saving Noah tackles a subject most people don’t want to acknowledge even exists: what happens when a child—a good, kind, seemingly normal child—develops an attraction to younger children? What if that child is your child? That’s exactly the nightmare that Adrienne , a mother and former competitive swimmer, finds herself living in when her 15-year-old son Noah confesses to having molested two little girls on his swim team. Noah doesn’t try to hide it. In fact, he turns himself in and begs for help. But there is no real help. Instead, Noah is arrested and...
Read more

Audition by Katie Kitamura

-
Image
🎭 Audition by Katie Kitamura — ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (3.5/5) 🛒 Buy Audition on Amazon (affiliate link) ⚠️ Trigger Warnings Pregnancy loss, abortion, emotional abuse, elder abuse, relationship tension, and grief. 💬 My Thoughts Some books feel like entertainment. Others feel like an experience . Audition falls firmly into the second category. Katie Kitamura writes in a way that’s hard to describe — it’s controlled, elegant, and quietly unsettling. The story moves slowly, but it absorbs you. You don’t just read it — you live inside it for a while. The premise sounds deceptively simple: an actress preparing for a new stage role meets a young man named Xavier, who claims to be her son. From there, the story morphs into something much stranger and deeper — about identity, performance, and the thin line between truth and illusion. I can’t say I fully understood it, and I’m not even sure it’s meant to be fully understood. It’s layered and cerebral, and at times it felt a little too “hig...
Read more

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

-
Image
🧠 What If the Scariest Monster Is Forgetting? ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Book Review: There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm Oh. My. Brain. 😳 You know how I cannot handle horror movies? Ghosts? Dead bodies? Skeletons? Absolutely not. Hard pass. But losing your mind? Losing your memories? Losing yourself? Now that is horror on a whole different level. And this book? It weaponizes that fear. 🔥 Five stars. No hesitation. ⚠️ Content & Trigger Warnings Before we dive into this beautiful nightmare: Graphic violence Death & mass casualties Body horror Brain damage Self-harm Mental illness Substance abuse (mnestic drugs) Emotional trauma Animal death Apocalyptic themes This is not cozy sci-fi. This is existential dread in a lab coat. 🧪 📚 Overview Published: 2021 (traditional release 2025) Author: qntm (Sam Hughes) Genre: Science Fiction / Cosmic Horror / Philosophical Thriller Originally born from the SCP Wiki universe, this novel follows a secret global research group— the Unknown Organizatio...
Read more

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

-
Image
  👶🔍 The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena — ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5 Stars) A Baby Monitor, A Missing Infant, and the Worst Dinner Party Ever Okay. Let’s talk about a book that I absolutely devoured in one sitting. The second I started The Couple Next Door , I knew sleep was not happening until I reached the last page. And guess what? I was right. 😅 This is classic Shari Lapena — fast chapters, escalating suspicion, morally messy characters, and twists that make you side-eye literally everyone. And yes… it absolutely gave me shades of the Madeline McCann disappearance situation. Uncomfortable? Yes. Unputdownable? Also yes. ⚠️ Trigger Warnings Kidnapping of an infant Postpartum depression Infidelity Murder Financial fraud Emotional manipulation Dissociative episode Domestic tension 📖 Overview: What’s This Thriller About? Anne and Marco Conti are exhausted new parents to six-month-old baby Cora . When their babysitter cancels last minute before a birthday dinner next door, they make a choice...
Read more