I really enjoyed this as a opening chapter to the Shield series, it had that feel that I was looking for and enjoyed the world and how the story was being told. I was invested in what was happening and how it was going to be different from other saving the universe. Alexa Shay has a strong writing style and was glad I read this.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3.5/5) The Shield by Alexa Shay

This book was solid. It had aspects I love, and aspects I was indifferent too. I really liked the “magic” system, but there were parts I was confused by.

The story follows Amy, who learns she’s the vessel for the shield when she turns 16. And Connor who is the vessel for the sword, and has been training his entire life. Every few generations the shield and the sword battle for the fate of the people, which usually leaves the vessels deceased. The swords advisor decides to have him befriend the shield to gain her trust, and they end up both falling for each other before their battle.

Personally, I would have appreciated a little more backstory into the shield and the sword, why they exist, who created them, etc.

It took a little while for Connor to grow on me, but I think thats the point. The ending was so fast paced, and kept me really engaged. I truly wanted Amy and Conner to end up together, and was very interested in how the battle would play out.

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#readmore

This was a book with a lot of interesting ideas and relationships. Two teens, Connor and Amy, are inhabited by the ancient battling powers of the sword and the shield (respectively) and know they will eventually have to fight each other, possibly to the death. Except they're falling in love with each other.

This was a really unique premise and had some real resonance with our current world - the idea that teenagers would be forced to shoulder the burdens of the adults of generations before, feeling the pressure. I also really enjoyed Amy's brother Arty - he was an unusual archetype that you don't often see in older sibling characters, the Star Trek nerd (now that I've heard of a car named Pi"car"d, I will never forget it) who also runs marathons.

The book is quite short, and I really wished the book had given the story more time to breathe. At one point, it is briefly mentioned that the Sword wants to quiet all the business of human life.m. It would nice to understand more about the sword's perspective. Does the sword feel that human life is destroying the planet? Why is the secret society who protects the sword so invested? Adding a bit more backstory and spelling out some of these connections would have been helpful.

I would definitely recommend this to middle schoolers who are interested in fantasy and fantasy romance

When I first sat down and tried to figure out how to sort books by star ratings, I decided that a 3 star review was for books that had about an even mix of strengths and weaknesses. I think that this book was a solid three star read.

The weaknesses:
- I really struggled to get into the story initially because the characterization seemed a bit rough. I had a hard time understanding who the characters were as people, and their actions didn't always seem coherent.
- This book is a debut novel, and it shows in the writing. There's a lot of showing, the places where the scene zooms in and zooms out don't always make sense, and some details seem unnecessarily added while others seem skipped over. It reminds me of the way I wrote in high school (not that I'm sure I can necessarily write better now... I just haven't practiced much since high school), and that made it harder to initially get invested in the story and the characters or get fully lost in the story.
- The side characters didn't seem fully fleshed out and often read more as caricatures than characters.
- Aspects of the worldbuilding confused me. For example, I never quite understood why the Sword and Shield battling each other had to happen that way. Why couldn't the sword start destroying things and see how far it could get before the shield stopped it? Why did the two people have to fight each other first?

The strengths:
- A romance I actually understood and could get behind. The main romance made sense, and it never felt forced to me. I'm particularly impressed by this because many of the books I've read recently have left me wondering what the main male lead sees in the female lead, which makes the romance feel forced and unnatural to me. Even though I quickly spotted the main couple, the romance actually developed at a reasonable pace and I always understood why they were attracted to each other beyond the necessities of plot.
- The relationships in general were very well done. Even though the aspects of the writing style that annoyed me at the beginning of the book were still present at the end of the story, I found that I cared about them a lot less because I was invested in the relationships. Amy's relationship with her brother, the main friend group, and the main romance were all beautiful and compelling relationships that I genuinely cared about and wanted to keep interacting with.
- The way Connor and Amy grew and stabilized as characters was also very promising. Although the characterization did feel uneven at the beginning of the book, by the end of the book I had a very clear picture in my mind of who Connor and Amy were as people. I understood their motivations, I cared about their success, and I wanted them to be everything they wanted to be. I was fully invested.
- Even with the weaknesses, I didn't want to put the book down once I hit about 50% of the way into the book. The story sucked me in, and I wanted to keep reading and see what would happen next.

All in all, this book shows a lot of promise, and I'm curious to see where Alexa Shay goes as a writer as she continues to publish and grow in her journey. I'd recommend this story to younger readers who will be able to enjoy the beautiful relationships and healthy romance since they are less likely to be dissuaded by the things that I personally found distracting. That being said, I'm an older reader myself, and I'm curious to see where the rest of the series goes, so do with that information what you will.

Thank you to NetGalley and A. Walter Publishing Company for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

A cute, somewhat campy teen fantasy!

I enjoyed the premise driving this story forward, two entities who continuously "possess" mortal bodies to continue their war. I liked the camaraderie between the characters and found myself comparing my reading experience to that of The Summoning by Kelly Armstrong.

Amy is a strong, easy to root for protagonist, who cares deeply for everyone around her making it very easy to relate to her. Overall, though this reads a bit to young for older teenagers, I would recommend this book to this 15 years old and younger enthusiastically.

(Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book.)