A Million Suns & Shades of Earth by Beth Revis

BE WARNED: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
A Million Suns by Beth Revis
"It's been three months since Amy was unplugged. The life she always knew is over. Everywhere she looks, she sees the walls of the spaceship Godspeed. But there may be hope: Elder has assumed leadership of the ship. He's finally free to act on his vision--no more Phydus, no more lies. But when Elder learns shocking news, he and Amy must race to discover the truth behind life on Godspeed, all the while dealing with the romance that's growing between them and the chaos that threatens to tear them apart."- summary from Amazon

Shades of Earth by Beth Revis
"Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceship Godspeed behind. They're ready to start life afresh--to build a home--on Centauri-Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled 25 trillion miles across the universe to experience.

But this new Earth isn't the paradise Amy had been hoping for. There are giant pterodactyl-like birds, purple flowers with mind-numbing toxins, and mysterious, unexplained ruins that hold more secrets than their stone walls first let on. The biggest secret of all? Godspeed's former passengers aren't alone on this planet. And if they're going to stay, they'll have to fight.

Amy and Elder must race to discover who--or what--else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. They will have to look inward to the very core of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet. Because if the colony collapses? Then everything they have sacrificed--friends, family, life on Earth--will have been for nothing."- summary from Amazon

I love this series and am actually glad I ended up waiting for the final book to be released before reading books 2 and 3. It was nice to be able to go straight to Book 3 right after finishing Book 2. There was such a cliffhanger at the end of A Million Suns; I was eager to see where Amy and Elder's journey would take them after getting on the shuttle.

I will say though that I enjoyed Shades of Earth a bit more. I think it was because there were new characters and a new setting with some familiar faces, so it was refreshing and more compelling for me to read. But A Million Suns had its fair share of mystery and twists and turns. I'm amazed at how Revis writes this series and keeps everything tied together and also calls back to things mentioned earlier in the book. I also want to say that there's a character in Shades of Earth that I didn't trust from the beginning and I was right not to. I was proud of myself for that.

I loved also returning to Amy and Elder's voices; Revis does a great job writing them and keeping the two distinct as the story flips back and forth between them. Their romance is fun to read and there's always obstacles in their way that they have to fight through; it feels like a real relationship.

Overall, this is seriously a fantastic trilogy that's amazingly compelling and written extremely well. Go check these books out!

FTC: Received ARCs from publisher. Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.