Review: Crew Princess by Tijan

Crew Princess by Tijan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC by the author in exchange for an honest review.

This picks up shortly where Crew left off. This is not a standalone, and I'd highly recommend reading Crew first before diving in to this one. The dynamics of how crews operate and the social structure of the entire town won't make sense.

This mainly focuses on Bren, much like Crew did. Again she is surrounded by The Wolf Crew, Jordan, Zellman, and Cross who is now her boyfriend. Bren is again working through some of her demons, though this time they aren't all buried in the past, some of them are forcing her to face the future as graduation is approaching. As Wolf Crew has to decide what to do about college and what to do after high school, they also have to deal with some very ugly "crew business" brewing in the background that seems centered on getting Bren to violate her probation. Bren has been trying to behave, no fighting or pulling knives on people, going to counseling, and doing her community service after what happened in Crew (go read it). She is finding it very hard not to end up back in jail with all of the shenanigans happening around her that either point to her or require her crew to take action.

When the three local towns are forced to come together when a local school is burned down things get messy. Crews are pitted against each other, and things get ugly. Wolf Crew does what they do best and retaliate because crew protects their own and they are loyal to their town of Roussou. As things unfold, Bren discovers that there is a deeper motive than just crew vs. crew rivalry going on. At the same time the school has brought in a camera crew to film a documentary on their town and the local celebrity athletes that came from the town. Turns out they want to spin it to know more about the crew system, which everyone knows you don't talk about.

This book took me a while to get into. It was all over the place at first, but I think that was because you were supposed to feel like you were in Bren's head and her thoughts were kind of all over the place. Bren is a bit of a mess emotionally throughout the book, and I had a hard time keeping up with her. I kind of think that was the point though, you go through her emotional journey with her as she figures herself out. Bren isn't the only one going through some stuff in this book, several of the characters go through some messy emotional situations. There is alot going on in this book, sometimes I felt like I wasn't sure how it all fit together. Tijan didn't fail me and brought it all together in the end and while it ended a bit on a cliffhanger, can't say I'm surprised by the ending. I'm looking forward to the next book and to see where Wolf Crew is headed in the next installment. If you liked Crew you'll enjoy this.

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