Review: breath of fresh air
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 14, 2013
This is a debut novel for this Author, and in a reading world where the dystopian genre is becoming tired and stale, it brings a welcome breath of fresh air.Aimed at the YA reader, this book is full of vibrate young characters, full of humour and life.  There are four main protagonists in this book and each is written with as much care and detail as the others, there is no skimping on character development from this Author, and this makes this book an easy read full of characters the reader can care about to the point where you don’t want anything untoward to happen to them.  The Author broke the chapters contained within the book into a way to tell the story from each of these character’s perspectives; again this works really well as through the telling of the tale this way more of the back story of each of the characters is unveiled, giving even more depth to what are already some very well written and three-dimensional characters.  There are romantic interludes in the novel, but this didn’t make me cringe in any way, as they are written in a manner that reflects romance in real life; they are full of all the expectations and tensions that can be felt in these instances.As well as being a good read, this book can be seen at some levels as being a commentary of the current body image trend that seems to be rampant in our society; an image is projected of the perfect man or woman and people will go to any lengths to achieve this.  In building the world contained within this novel it is apparent that the Author has done a great deal of research, as the book is full of science.  However, do not let this put you off as the Author has managed to include real science, without going too deeply into details and making the intended audience want to stop reading.  Another great achievement in my opinion, as trying to get the demographic this book is aimed to read in the first place, let alone to want to keep reading is no easy task; this Author manages to achieve both with ease.The ‘new world order’ that the Author uses as her locations are also very well written, and the attitude that is prevalent in this ‘new world’ causes chills to run down the spine in some places, as the reader reflects on the world they live in now and wonders just how close we could be to the chaos and disruption they are reading about, and an all powerful government dictating our every move.  Again, like the character development, the way this world is split and divided is not throw at you in one large chunk, but a gradual trickle that appears when the reader needs to know this information; this prevents any reader from feeling overwhelmed and adds a nice dimension and flow to the novel as a whole.  With intelligent, sharp and witty prose the book is easy enough for any YA reader to understand without becoming lost and, at the same time, manages to appeal to any adult reader who may pick this up without insulting their intelligence.I would highly recommend this novel to readers of all ages, and especially lovers of The Hunger Games series.  I will definitely be reading further instalments in this series.Originally reviewed on:  [...]