Salvation (Sanctuary #3) by Caryn Lix

SYNOPSIS

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

These are the words Kenzie has always lived by. The problem is, she’s fallen down too many times to count.

Kenzie and her friends have already escaped two vicious alien attacks—not to mention the corporate bounty hunters sent to capture them. They’re haunted by the friends they’ve lost and the hard choices they’ve had to make in this war they never asked for. 

​And now, thanks to superpowers she received from the very aliens she’s fighting, Kenzie has stranded everyone on a strange planet with no way off. 

She just wanted a safe place from the monstrous creatures terrorizing her world, but this new planet has dangers of its own, and Kenzie will have to uncover its secrets if she has any hope of ever making it home again.

Sacrifice is nothing new for Kenzie. She’ll do anything--anything—to destroy the aliens that killed both of her parents. But how can Kenzie save Earth if she can’t even save the people she loves?

Synopsis from Goodreads

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PERSONAL REVIEW

I can’t believe I missed this books publication date! I am going to take a moment here and say its the fault of mom brain, but I really enjoyed the first two books in the trilogy, so of course I was annoyed with myself for not realizing the third and final book had been released. That said, I was finally able to read it and I thought it was a good ending to the Sanctuary trilogy.

Another New World
Wow, does the original crew of Sanctuary get around! These teens have just been in so many insane situations, and I feel like they have just spent months bouncing around between worlds. Honestly, I don’t understand how they even have the energy to keep going! Of course their survival instincts have kicked in (and these are kids with strong survival instincts), but this new world is really daunting because of how similar it is to Earth, which really gives you the creeps as a reader not knowing where they really are. After all the death and loss of Containment, we just wants the characters to have a chance to breathe, but of course that’s not going to happen. Lix did a really good job creating tension in this book and a lot of anxiety is being unsure of where they are now and who else is on this planet. There is a lot to be nervous about…

Hard Loses
It’s actually so heartbreaking that characters who have made it this far still end up dying. The two big deaths in this book broke my heart and honestly I was a bit shocked that Lix would write the final book this way. This crew has made it so far and have just struggled so hard, so to lose anybody now is just awful. I kind of wonder if there was a different way to move the story here, because one death in particular felt very unnecessary. It would’ve been very possible for him to live and I feel like he was just thrown in there to kind of upset the balance more than for a valuable death. The second heartbreaking death at the end of the book made a lot more sense to me, and although it’s incredibly sad for the character and for the reader, I understood why she did what she did.   

Ending Felt Rushed
The last few chapters of the book felt like an add on, especially after the intensity of the rest of the book (and series). I appreciate the open ending - what will characters do next is up to them - but the holding cells and corporation talks felt so light, especially since these are all wanted criminals. I would love to know what characters like Mia do next - where does she go? How does she spend the rest of her life? This has been a heartbreaking journey for all these teens and now that it’s over I would have loved to see an epilogue set in the future to know where they go. Are they still working against corporations? Are they in touch? How do they rebuild after losing so much? It would’ve been nice to get some sort of apologue, maybe some kind of time jump, just give us a bit more closure. However, this does leave Lix the option to write novellas or future books where we meet up with these characters again.

Overall, this was a nice ending to the Sanctuary trilogy. While I do have a lot of questions about what happens next, and  we do lose some characters along the way, I think this both wraps up the series but also leaves us a room for the author to come back in the future. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is read the first two books in the trilogy or to those looking for a young adult sci-fi novel.

I’m very interested to hear what other readers thought about this ending to the trilogy. Let me know what you think!

FINAL RATING: 4/5

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