Ruby Redfort Fanfiction: Look Into His Eyes And Take Your Last Breath

BAYD SPOILERS AHEAD

WARNING: Following content contains serious spoilers and feels. Do not proceed if you have not read the book or have been diagnosed by your doctor with FHMD (Feels Hurt Me Disorder). If you think you may have FHMD while reading this I advise you contact a therapist immediately as it is a common condition among fangirls and symptoms include crying, contemplating life, not doing homework, continuous talking about fandoms, reading fanfictions, squealing while reading books, PMing etc.

I have no words. This book is up there among Allegiant, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Mockingjay, The Mark of Athena (c'mon, we all worried that Percabeth was over for a year)and Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception. I cried three times. 1, when LB was talking to Ruby in the car park about her experience with the Trolley Problem. 2, when Bradley Baker died. 3, when the book finished. Lauren Child nailed this book, she put all the stuff we were waiting for (and really didn't want to happen) in it, and brought BRADLEY BAKER BACK FROM THE DEAD, ONLY TO KILL HIM OFF AFTER A COUPLE OF CHAPTERS, BROKE LB, BROKE RUBY, MADE US THINK THE COUNT WAS LORELEI VON LEYDON'S DAD, MADE US ALMOST LIKE THE COUNT, MADE US THINK HITCH WAS DEAD, MADE US THINK HITCH WAS CASEY MORGAN, MADE BUZZ THE REAL CASEY MORGAN, MAKE US THINK HITCH WAS GOING TO DIE, MADE US RESPECT MRS. DIGBY MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET, AND DIDN'T INCLUDE CLUBY, and generally just messed with our feels. It is rumored that Lauren Child is now on the run from the police for causing mass FHMD.

My reaction was so mixed, I just gotta do it with pictures:

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/awesome-mysticalcupcakecollector

I really have very little criticism for the book. The thing that I wanted to happen was to see more of Buzz/Casey Morgan. After the big reveal, Buzz was Casey Morgan for approximately five to ten pages before her ultimate downfall. We didn't really get to see the villain that Buzz was supposed to be, and that was slightly disappointing as Buzz was supposed to be more evil than the Count.

Addressing Cluby, I wasn't too upset about them not cannoning. There was very little space for it in a book so packed that it keeps you awake thinking about it at night. It would've been too rushed if it was slotted it at the end, and even if they had cannoned in the first hundred pages, there wouldn't have been many moments of them together.

Let's admit, LB and Bradley Baker completely stole the show. Lauren Child tried to convince me that they were friends, but come on. They kissed and Ruby said several times they looked like a couple. This was probably why Bradley Baker's death was so upsetting.

As for the Count, he was revealed to be just as interesting as he looked in other books. To be honest, it would have been a lot more interesting if he really had been Lorelei's dad. He was almost likeable in the book, not killing Ruby, tipping her off on who Casey Morgan was. His death was ultimately very surprising, but of course, we don't know if he is really dead or not.

Hitch had a pretty rough time in BAYD. He almost died in the plane explosion, was accused by Ruby of being Casey Morgan, was almost killed by Buzz (for a second I thought he had been killed) and was generally bashed around a bit. But of all the characters, he remained the most reliable and steadfast, and didn't change at all.

Clancy got braver in this book. He had faced the Count three to fourish times, and followed Ruby's rule: Don't panic, panic freezes your brain. He constantly proved his understanding of the human brain and played probably the most important part of Ruby's survival by telling her to trust her sixth sense. He was involved quite a lot as Ruby's ideas generator and her ideas wingman. He offered pretty good advice and used a lot more reason and logic to get around stuff he was scared of.

LB was one of the best characters in the book. She was selfless and she was brave and she was the leader that Spectrum deserved in the book. She had her broken heart repaired only for it to be broken, but refused to stand down, and acted in some situations like another mother to Ruby. I absolutely loved her.

Baker was a far cry from the annoying person we all kind of thought he was because he was a rival to Ruby. He was always putting Ruby, LB, Hitch and Clancy before himself, and had superhuman like talent in the wild. He was a really important part of the story, because of who he was and because he was constantly praised. His reputation brought his downfall, not his personality, which was pretty unfair on him. I wanted to know him better as a person, rather than learning about what he had done in the past to annoy Casey Morgan.

Froghorn was less patronizing, even if he kept arguing that Baker was better. The fact that he figured out that Buzz was Casey Morgan was amusing and he, in the end, wasn't as bad as I thought. That being said, he had the advantage of not being the one who was about to be killed, and could contemplate the case's facts while tucked up safely in his office eating donuts.

Ruby Redfort, making her last appearance, didn't let me down. She was as badass and fabulous as ever, and this time round, a tad more emotional. Ruby was, as she herself put it, the last to see the elephant in the room. She missed a few things right in front of her eyes, but was caught up a lot in a maelstrom of emotions, so she sometimes lost her sense of logic and reason. She also had a pretty rough time, but she's come out of the experience all the wiser, and I'm sure she'll make an incredible Spectrum agent.

If you think about it, Lauren Child used elements from ALL the books in this last one. The Jade Buddha of Khotan was used as Ruby had that message hidden in her eyes, which gave Casey Morgan a motive to want to track it down, also the Count, who wanted to outsmart Morgan and therefore collected all the things Morgan wanted, but also a few more to help him defeat her. The inky serum in the second book was for getting Clancy to tell the truth, the Cyan scent in the third book for getting Bug to lead Ruby to the Count. The Spectrum key was relevant to the larvae program of course. The beginning of the first book, the incident with Homer Pinkerton was important as well.

But I almost forget how the Count and Morgan just wanted the message in Ruby's eyes. To me, this was a revenge story for Casey Morgan and she out to ruin everyone's life. This was also a story about trust, and Ruby HAD to use her sixth sense to get her out of it, not logic. It's part of the fun of the books. They keep telling Ruby to use her brain, not her senses, but each book has a kind of scent code. That confused me as I knew there were only five senses, and the way Lauren Child put the sixth book as the sixth sense made me laugh at the ingenuity of it.

As aforementioned, this book has a rating of 9.5 out of 10 for pure ingenuity, feels, characters, a brilliantly twisted plot and just a lot of codes. Romance was introduced, but it stayed FIRMLY in the background, which is how I like it. I ship people as much as anyone else, but a story purely about the romance between two people is plain cheesy and a bit tedious. Which is why Harry Potter is a win, Percy Jackson series one is delightful, but series two is not as good as the first. Well done Lauren Child, please have movies for ALL SIX BOOKS PLEASE or a sequel or spinoff of SOMETHING.