Category Archives: Dystopia or Post-Apocalyptic

They aren’t the same genre, but both deal with a future of uncertainties.

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Insurgent by Veronica Roth

I wasn’t a huge fan of Divergent. I didn’t like Tris’ moral character, I didn’t swoon for Four, and I certainly didn’t buy their relationship. The only thing I really liked was how well Roth can write action.

Insurgent didn’t really change my feelings toward the series all that much.

I will still say Roth can write action. There’s hardly a moment of rest, and the few moments the characters do get are filled with the tension of waiting for the next big scene. It was fast-paced and amazing. I could picture everything in my head as I read, and the fight scenes were complex, but written in a way that makes it easy to picture.

Unfortunately, I still don’t really like Tris. Where in Divergent I thought she lost all sense of a moral center, in Insurgent she become reckless and stupid, under the guise of being brave and strong. Being brave does not mean tossing yourself into situations because you can. Brave is knowing when, how, and why to fight and when, how, and why to stand down. Tossing your life around because you can is not being brave or strong. I really, really hope Roth can finally make Tris the character she needs to be in the last book, but to be honest; I’m not holding my breath at this point.

The relationship between Tris and Tobias (Four) feels strained. There’s too much hidden, too many lies and little betrayals to have it feel like a good relationship. There’s only so many times a couple can ignore the problems with their relationship by making out before it blows up in their faces and can’t be repaired.

The action is the only thing that kept me reading this book. Knowing me, I will read the last book, simply because I’ve made it this far and I want to know how it ends. The twist at the end does have me interested, but unless the characters can manage to salvage themselves in the third book, this isn’t going to be a stand out series for me.

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Once by Anna Carey

As much as I try to escape them, book trilogies keep pulling me back in. I’ll love the first book, the second will be a major disappointment, and the third will somehow manage to make me love it more than I thought I could. I loved Eve and wanted to keep reading Eve’s story, even though most book sequels disappoint me and only act as a bridge between the first and last books. Carey didn’t fall into this trap. She wrote a book that had its own identity, while still needing the other books to tell a complete story.

In Once, there’s a pretty big opening shock. I certainly didn’t see it coming. But I liked it. It made things different than how I thought they’d go. The other plot twists have me thinking about people differently and looking at who I trust and who I don’t. I love when an author can mess me around that much and still make me love a book.

Of course, this isn’t a standalone novel. You need to read Eve in order to know about Once. However, Once does stand by itself in the sense that it has its own stories, its own plot that are different from those in Eve. It serves as a set-up for Rise, but it’s more than just the set-up. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Anna Carey for writing a sequel that wasn’t novel-length filler.

Eve and Caleb are still ever present and had my heart pulling for them so hard. They jump into some decisions, just like teens would, regardless of their circumstances. But they also are great planners and can think of nothing more than how to get to the future where they are together. One plot twist had my heart breaking, even though I saw it coming. I just want the future for these two that they dream of.

Once was a wonderful sequel that jumped right over the trap of the sequel slump. There’s love, action and plotting. It had me completely engrossed from start to end. It’s going to be a long, long wait for the finale and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

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Eve by Anna Carey

I held out on reading Eve because I was a little over dystopian novels for a while. There are only so many times in a row you can read about the bleak future of the world before you need a break. I’m actually pretty upset with myself now for how long it took me to read this. I should have read it sooner.

Eve remembers just a little bit of her life before the plague killed her mother and she was sent to School. While there, she becomes the best student of her class and finds a lot of pride in that. On the night before her Graduation, she discovers what the School is really a front for and decides to make a run for it. She heads into land where nothing she knows will help her. She may be book smart by the School’s standards, but when it comes to surviving she’s clueless. And yet she doesn’t think about giving up. All she knows is she does not want to end up like the rest of the girls that graduated from her School. She wants to be herself and not have anyone dictate her life for her. It’s this that gives her the strength of character that has me loving her. She doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do, she just knows what she does not want to do and lets that determination guide her.

Caleb had me crushing. He was sweet and strong and caring. He knows helping Eve won’t be easy, and yet he still helps her because he doesn’t want to see anything happen to her. The way they fall together was perfect and not too fast and felt right. It wasn’t love at first sight and it took time. That made it feel real and even sweeter than most Young Adult romances out there now.

Eve was a fantastic novel with amazing characters and a world just real enough to make it terrifying. The end had me wanting more and I can’t wait to see what Carey has in store for Once.

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Legend by Marie Lu

I’ve had this sitting in my kindle for a while now and I’m not really sure why I kept passing it over. But a couple days ago, I saw it sitting there and I just went for it. I’m incredibly glad I did. Legend was a fantastic novel that had the right mix of action, romance, and explanation of the dystopian future Lu created.

I was so happy to find that both main characters are strong people. They might depend on each other at times, but they can make their own way. They know their strengths and weaknesses and make each situation work as well as it can for them.

I loved June. She could have easily come off as a very cocky individual, but she downplayed her talent just enough to make her lovable. And Day could have easily gone down the same overly cocky path as June, but Lu wrote him with just a touch of that arrogance and it made him perfect. He knew he was good, but he didn’t let that take over. He kept himself in check.

Even the supporting characters are wonderful. I especially love Tess. She found herself in a bad situation and with a little help from Day, managed to make herself into something more than she ever would have been without him.

The love aspect of this story fits amazingly. There’s not too much, but there’s just enough to make you swoon. Any more romance and it wouldn’t have been believable. June and Day don’t have time to fall in love the normal way. They’re under so many pressures and stresses that the way it comes about makes perfect sense.

Legend was a fabulous, amazing read and I can’t wait to read the next part of June and Day’s story. Lu definitely has me hooked.

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Fever by Lauren DeStefano

I liked pieces of this book and I disliked parts of this book. It took me a little while to get through, since I only had a couple hours at most each day to read, and maybe that got in the way a little of being able to fully enjoy this. It just felt like there wasn’t much progress and I had a hard time connecting with the characters.

I’m still not a huge fan of Rhine as a character. Once she breaks free of the mansion, it becomes a focus of her thoughts, and she even refuses to take off her wedding ring; the last major thing tying her to the marriage with Linden. Where her quiet resistance in the first book made sense, in Fever, I kept wanting her to fight. To dig deep and find a way to fight for what she wants, to know she made the right decision in leaving and bringing Gabriel with her. It never happened and while a possible explanation entered near the end of the book, I’m not sold and I really hope DeStefano can make me believe it in the next book.

Gabriel still doesn’t interest me. In Wither, he was hardly around enough to form a real connection with. In Fever, he’s around more, but half the time he’s drugged and not himself, a quarter of the time either he or Rhine is sleeping and that last quarter is what he really is. I’m sure a lot of people are completely in love with him, and I see his potential, but he’s just not there. I haven’t seen enough of him as him to really feel the romance between him and Rhine.

The other thing that left me feeling disappointed was the plot. It felt like a lot of running and hiding, but there weren’t any answers to questions. It felt a bit like running on a treadmill. You’re doing something, but getting nowhere. Things happened, and I understand that they had to happen, but it just feels like it was a lot for nothing. And yet it somehow kept me interested and the ending has me ready to read the next book.

What I really loved about this book, though, were the secondary characters, especially Maddie. I fell in love with her hard this book. Lilac, Jared, Silas, and Claire were wonderful additions to the story and I found myself wanting to read more about them than I did Rhine and Gabriel. They were different and extremely wonderful to read.

Fever had as much potential to be a great story as Wither, but it fell a little short. It’s still an interesting story, but I wish there was a little bit more to Rhine and Gabriel. There’s enough to the book to keep me reading, and I hope DeStefano can write a conclusion that blows me out of the water.

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Wither by Lauren DeStefano

I think DeStefano has an interesting idea for a story. It’s a bit different than most of what’s out there and it has the possibility to explore some really great topics. If you know you’re going to die at a certain age, how would you live your life? What would you do, what you say, what kind of person would you be? Unfortunately, for as much as DeStefano tries, Wither comes up a bit short.

It was hard to connect with Rhine. I didn’t completely understand her motives behind wanting to leave so badly. If you only have 20 years to live, would you rather spend them hiding with your brother in a basement using a gun to protect you from intruders, or in a mansion where anything you want, you can get? I wish there had been more reasoning behind Rhine’s urgent need to leave. I just had a hard time making sense of her. Other than that, she’s a mostly likable person and there’s a lot of room for her to grow and I’ll be reading to see what she does.

Linden fell completely flat for me as a possible love interest. He’s completely oblivious to most everything around him and I found him to be just a little creepy. He has no problem taking on multiple wives, one of them barely into her teens. He has no clue about what his father does in the basement of the mansion and I found it hard to believe he’d never question anything his father told him. He had a lot of potential to be a strong character and it wasn’t quite reached.

Gabriel was hardly even around and while I found his relationship with Rhine a little sweet, it was still hard to believe they had more than an incredibly strong friendship. He’s there for a little while, and then disappears. It felt more like Rhine was attaching to him simply because he wasn’t Linden instead of having actual feelings for him. I hope this will be explored more in Fever.

I was really looking forward to reading this book and unfortunately, it was a little disappointing. It felt like it wasn’t quite finished because there was so much room for growth in each character and the plot. It tried, but it didn’t quite succeed.

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Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

This book is hardly unique. There’s been several post-apocalyptic, dystopian novel published recently. There’s a love story in nearly every Young Adult book. There have been a lot of “difference people can’t be together” stories out there. And yet, I am absolutely in love with this book and the way Rossi told this story.

The world isn’t completely described. Rossi gives enough information to start painting the picture, but information out and places open. There’s several things mentioned, but never really explained. It never gets in the way of the story, though, and it feels like she did this with a major purpose. She wasn’t avoiding filling in all the facts because she wants people to be buying the books to get the answers, but it feels like she was avoiding some things because they weren’t necessary to understand the plot. She didn’t want to dump a ton of information in the middle of the adventure and I’m so grateful she left little things out there. It only makes me more and more interested.

The characters are another amazing piece in this novel. They don’t immediately fall in love, like a lot of Young Adult romances do. There was a gradual build up to the first kiss and it felt right. The characters were in the right place for each other. They had grown separately before beginning things. It’s probably one of the best love stories I’ve read in recent memory.

Tied together with the romance is that of the action part of the book. Under the Never Sky is more about the journey these characters are taking, with a dash of love thrown in. It’s about two people wanting to find answers and find the people they love and through that, they begin to love each other. It’s about more than these two people falling in love and I really, really liked that. It made the book even more enjoyable and I really couldn’t put it down.

Under the Never Sky is an amazing start to a new trilogy. It’s fast-paced, yet never feels rushed. There’s an adventure and a love story. There’s major plot twists and several hold your breath moments. It’s everything I want a book to be and I’m so happy I read it.

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Green Heart by Alice Hoffman

Green Heart is two books in one. The first book is Green Angel, the second is Green Witch. I thought about trying to write this review without separating the two, but that wasn’t working. They are two very different stories wrapped up in one another and it’s lovely.

The first, Green Angel is about Green’s journey through loss and grief and finding herself again. She loses her entire family in a horrible, devastating way. She crumbles and has to put herself together again. She feels guilty, regretful and, of course, extremely sad and upset. She has to rebuild her life without those she loved most, but she ends up finding comfort in new people. The neighbor she and her sister stole apples from, the girl from her school that was never really her friend, the boy survivor that stumbles into her life and holds her heart.

It’s a short story, but incredibly moving and hopeful. The way the story is written leaves much to the imagination, and yet you aren’t left trying to figure things out. It’s all laid out, waiting for you to read and put together. It’s dark and yet there’s light that keeps shining through with every page. I absolutely loved it.

Green Witch is the continuation of Green Angel and is more about Green finding herself again and finding the reason people fall in love. She’s looking for something as she visits the houses of neighbors the village people consider “witches;” those that can look past the ugly and have something to give the world. They help Green as she searches for the boy she fell in love with and the girl that became her friend. With the help of these women, she’s able to find out that she’s stronger than she thought; she has a special power from within herself that people wish they could have. They turn to her for help and to help them find hope again.

Green Witch is another story of a journey, but this one is about finding your strength and who you are. It’s about love and what love is worth. Everyone has a different answer for how to measure love and it was beautiful to read how each woman viewed the love they had lost. It was both heartbreaking and empowering.

Green Heart is a simply breathtaking book that opens pieces of your soul and makes you feel. It’s a book that, while short, has an impact. The lyrical way it was written made it all the better. This is definitely a book people should read if they want something that will leave them feeling uplifted and refreshed.

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Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

WARNING: This review contains slightly spoilery statements. Read at your own discretion.

Continue reading →

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Divergent by Veronica Roth

This book was not what I expected. So many reliable people told me this book was amazing and that I would love it and I wouldn’t be able to put it down. It was decent, not amazing. I don’t love it; in fact, I barely like it. And it was very easy for me to put down.

I’ll start with what I did like. When there was plot progression, it was fantastic. The last 70 or so pages of the novel were the ones I couldn’t stop reading. Roth wrote the action very well and in a way that made it easy to picture without being oversimplified. However, the majority of the book is initiation training and trials, which slowed the novel down incredibly, in my opinion.

I didn’t feel connected with Tris and more to the point, half the novel, I kind of wanted to slap her. There’s written a strong female character, and then there’s taking it overboard. Tris takes it overboard quite a bit. In her attempt to distance Tris from the Abnegation, she goes so far as to seemingly lose a moral center. Being brave and facing your fears (aka Dauntless) doesn’t mean losing your ability to feel for other people. I have a major problem with Tris throughout the novel when it comes to this.

The relationship between Tris and Four feels…uncomfortable. I don’t buy it. There’s never a real connection and it’s hard for me to feel like there’s a real chance at a relationship there when they haven’t really spent much time together that wasn’t being used to train for the trials.

Unfortunately, because I’m curious and have a hard time telling myself no (even when I know better), I will probably be reading the next book just to see what happens. I’m really hoping it will surprise me and be better than the first.