Review: I'm torn
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 6, 2014
I'm really torn on how to rate this book. It had a lot of potential, but it just fell short for me. I was really excited to start reading this after suffering from some post book depression after The Hunger Games. I had read a view reviews that said it had a very similar vibe, so I was really hoping for the best here. Unfortunately, it just didn't deliver. Rosa, our MC, had so so much potential. I wanted to like her so bad, and to a degree, I did. I loved her spunk. I am all about angry, snarky, and bitter heroines. Up until Rosa met Joseph, I was really starting to get into her character and after that it just died. I know a lot of YA, especially dystopian YA seem to center around some kind of love story. That's fine, I can get behind that...if it's well done. Rosa and Joseph's relationship wasn't. They met, and instead of showing how they fell in love with each other, the author just tells us that they love each other. Instead of seeing, reading the dialog between Rosa and Joseph and seeing how well they click, and mesh and grow together, we're just told that after a couple of days (maybe it was more, the timeline was very confusing)that they feel so strongly about each other.It started to looking up a bit when Rosa left Pau Brasil to go to The Classes. I was hopeful, I loved the character of Rash and the other boys. But you blink, and it was over to move onto another plot. That is generally the whole pacing of this book. Joseph brings up Rosa's father who we hear about briefly and there's so much mystery surrounding him, and then bam, time to move on and forget about what was just said. That's kind of how everything plays out.I hesitate to say that at least the writing itself was good. While it was, somethings were just so hard to understand. There were scenes described that I literally had no idea what was going on, no matter how many times I reread. There's no character development for anyone. Characters feel more like cliche tropes rather than actual people. Rosa and Joseph's dynamic is flat, and boring. I don't feel any chemistry between them what so ever. A lot of their interactions go something like this.Rosa: -says something snarky-Joseph: -smiles, something about gold-Rosa: -continues to be snarky until she finally feels bad and semi-apologizes-Joseph: -accepts her apology and tells her how much he loves her-That's it. I have ZERO sense of who Joseph is. The only reason I have really any idea of who Rosa is because it's told from her narrative but if it weren't for that, I'd have no idea. We learn nothing about Joseph, other than he's made from gold, he's gorgeous, and says all the sweetest things even when Rosa is being a whiny brat. There's nothing wrong with the 'good guy' character (Hello Peeta Mellark!) but being as I know nothing about Joseph, it feels forced and fake.I hate to sound like I am bashing this book, because it's really not TERRIBLE. It just could be so much more. The world that the author describes is interesting and ultimately that is what kept me invested. I wanted to learn more about The Woodlands. I wanted to learn about the different places, the different classes, all the experiments, and the Superiors. But I didn't care about the characters.If you are like me, and don't particularly like cliff hanging endings that seem like a device to buy you the second book, consider yourself warned. The ending served it's purpose. Even though I wasn't in love with the book, upon finishing I immediately bought the second one without thinking. It was only when I was 15 percent into the second one did I realize that maybe I didn't want to continue on with this series. (Heads up to people who are considering the sequel, it ends in a very similar manner)Either way, I'm not really sure how to rate this book. On one hand, there were aspects of it that really interested me. But there were also a lot of things that left me rolling my eyes, too many underdeveloped characters, an all consuming love interest that didn't really make sense, and weird plot devices. Overall, I'd give it a 2.5.