Burning Bridges by Nadège Richards

*I received a free PDF version of this novel from the author for my honest review.*

This is a dystopian novel of a world where there is a New Haven and an Old Haven.

Echo is from the New Haven world. She is the Princess of Thediby, the one that will combine two families together with her marriage to Prince Noah, Prince of Delentia.

Ayden is from Old Haven, a world that has been picked apart and left in ruins. Work is hard to come by, money is something everyone wishes they have, and just making it to tomorrow is a blessing.

When Echo and Ayden meet, worlds collide. They can't stop thinking about each other. Even though their friendship is forbidden, they have to see each other or they feel as if a part of themselves is missing.

But when Noah finds out and then Echo's father, the King, finds out, things go very wrong. Echo is forbidden to see Ayden again. She can't accept that fate, so she defies the rules and runs away.

Only the King put out a reward for anyone to find both Echo and Ayden to bring them back to New Haven.

Will Echo and Ayden be able to escape from her father's rules? Will they always be running for their freedom to be with each other? Or will the King win and separate the two...for good? Read Burning Bridges by Nadège Richards to find out!

My Thoughts/Reflections
This was an intriguing novel. I was automatically sucked into the story as the reader is reading a very intense scene that is on the brink of war, then was transported 5 weeks earlier to how the war started.

The world that Richards created was amazing. Her writing was very easy to follow and before I knew it I had read 100 pages without a single pause in the story.

There were a few grammatical and punctuation errors, a few times where the wrong names were used in areas, but for a first novel I thought those errors were minor to the great story she created.

I did have a few problems with the characters. Yes, there was character development throughout the novel. Echo grew to learn the truth and to obtain what was right and what she wanted rather than what others wanted her to do.

But I felt like she was clinging to Ayden too much. For a strong willed character who went after what she wanted, she kept acting like a girl losing her head over a boy that she couldn't bear to be away from.

And Ayden, who's 5 years older than Echo, acted more like a teenager than a 22 year old when it came to Echo. Don't get me wrong, he was amazing for his family when his father was being absentee with his alcohol. He just seemed...like a lost little puppy when away from Echo...

I think that if the characters were more about "doing" than thinking and wishing, I would have liked them better. They want to be together forever? Great! Do something about it. Go away from the place that will eventually trap them. Not stare longingly into one another's eyes and then be shocked when you get caught.

However, even with my conflicted feelings about Echo and Ayden, I do think this was a great novel. And even better, we get to read more in Richard's second novel, Deceiving Destiny, which comes out December 2012 - so just 5 more months.

For anyone who likes dystopian novels or who likes a girl fighting for what she wants, I would recommend this novel to you. It was very well written and the reader was definitely snared into the story from the first page, making it a quick read and leaving the reader wanting more by the end of it.