The Thousandth Floor (The Thousandth Floor, #1)

by Katharine McGee

Welcome to Manhattan, 2118.

A thousand-storey tower stretching into the sky. A glittering vision of the future, where anything is possible – if you want it enough.

A hundred years in the future, New York's elite of the super-tower lie, backstab and betray each other to find their place at the top of the world. Everyone wants something… and everyone has something to lose.

As the privileged inhabitants of the upper floors recklessly navigate the successes and pitfalls of the luxury life, forbidden desires are indulged and carefree lives teeter on the brink of catastrophe. Whilst lower-floor workers are tempted by a world – and unexpected romance – dangling just out of reach. And on the thousandth floor is Avery Fuller, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all – yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have.

So when a young woman falls from the top of the supertower, her death is the culmination of a scandal that has ensnared the top-floor elite and bottom-floor. But who plummeted from the roof? And what dark secrets led to her fall?

Friends will be betrayed and enemies forged as promises are broken. When you’re this high up, there’s nowhere to go but down…

• ISBN13: 9780008179977
• Publish Date: 30 August 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[Angie]

Why do I love rich teenager drama?!?!

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

When I started The Thousandth Floor, I expected it to be a "guilty pleasure" type read, light but engaging with its portrayal of the lives of rich, glamorous teens in a futuristic Manhattan.  That's pretty much what it is, though I'm not entirely sure about the "engaging" bit.  While brainstorming this review, I realized I have to very little to say about the book.  It's about rich teens who spend their time shopping, drinking, and plotting petty revenge on the people who are ostensibly their friends.  The entertainment is supposed to come from watching their sordid little lives fall apart, I suppose, since even the rich and powerful have dark secrets.

The real problem with the novel is that, since everyone is petty and vengeful, they're very difficult to like.  I can get behind flawed, realistic characters, but these characters are, by and large, really horrible people.  It's hard not to feel they half-deserve anything bad that happens to them.  I wasn't really rooting for any of them to solve their problems, and I'm not very interested in reading the sequel.  I'm also not a fan of casual use of hard drugs or underage drinking, and there's a lot of that in this book. Basically, I would have avoided these people like the plague if I'd known them in high school, and I have the same gut reaction of dislike reading about them in a book.  There are maybe two characters who border on "likable" for me, and that's not enough to make me emotionally invested in the novel or a whole series.

I did somewhat enjoy the world-building. Who doesn't want to read about the lives of the ultra-rich 100 years in the future, where practically anything seems possible with technology?  However, I did get the impression that the setting was chosen mostly to add glamour to the story.  Since it wasn't really "the point" in some sense, it wasn't fully fleshed out.

The series is being billed as futuristic Gossip Girl (and like Gossip Girl, comes from Alloy Entertainment). I think it's fair to say that if Gossip Girl-esque stories are your genre, this novel might be for you.  If you're not into watching the lives of rich teens crash and burn, the novel doesn't have much else to offer you.

[Chelsea]

What I Loved

This is a book that I went into with high expectations and it probably wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t not like this book but I didn’t really love it either. I really loved the idea of all these people living in a giant tower. That was great but we didn’t really get to see much of it. We saw bits and pieces of it but we didn’t learn anything about how it came to be or how it even works. It felt like we were expected to know this place already and even though it was set in New York, we didn’t know anything about this place.

I’m struggling to mention things I loved about this book because the truth is it was only ok for me. The plot wasn’t too bad but there was a lot of characters who each had their own plot. Some of them were cool (like the poor hacker with a fancy AI) but most of the characters fell flat for me. That being said it wasn’t a bad book! Just a little boring and not fun to read.

I will give credit to the originality of this story! I personally have never read anything about a dystopian society living in a giant tower or the way each of these subplots were written. I didn’t like some of it but it was all very different.

What I Didn't Love

My lists of dislikes could get long but remember, I did give this a 3 star rating so it wasn’t as bad as I’m probably making it out to be.

First of all, the characters. Most of them drove me insane. I couldn’t feel any pity for the rich girl who ended up poor. None. Though she got a little better near the end I still thought she was whiny and annoying. I also couldn’t get into the sister/brother romance thing that was going on. It doesn’t matter that they weren’t biologically related, it was still weird and a little disturbing.

The only story I liked was Rylin because she actually worked really hard to come up with money to provide for her sister and I thought her romance she had going on was really cute. Watt was also an ok character but I didn’t find his storyline as exciting as some of the others. All the other characters were rich socialites which I normally love reading about but in this case they were extra annoying and I honestly couldn’t stand them all. When I don’t like or can’t connect to any of the characters that means a really low rating from me.

Who I'd Recommend To

If you can stand the whining and complaining of the rich and privileged then you would probably like this book a lot more than I did. The dystopian elements were cool but there wasn’t enough of them to make this an actual dystopia book. I don’t even know if I would actually recommend this book to anyone older than 15 but I’m still a teeny bit curious about the rest of the series. Fingers crossed it gets a lot better.

[readingwithwrin]

"Maybe that's all that praying was, she thought, just wishing good outcomes on other people.”

Characters:
Rylin- Responsible for little sister, maid
Hylin- Rylin's boyfriend works on elevators
Cord- Lost parents, lives alone, "dated" Elis
Elis- Avery's friend, lots of family drama
Leda- Avery's friend, has a problem
Avery- Perfect, complicated love life
Atlas- Avery's brother, adopted, away
Watt- hacker has a quant hidden
Mariel- Lower level, smart

Those are the main characters and how I was able to remember them.

We switch perspectives between the characters every chapter, and no one gets a lot of focus. In every chapter we do get to see different of the main characters and how they interact with each other. I don't want to give to much away about each character because I feel like it will ruin the story. But I will say this Elis, Rylin and Watt were my favorite out of all of them. I hope we get to see more of Watt and Rylin the next book, because I want to know how they deal with what happened and if they get into trouble for being there.

I know that Avery was supposed to be the 'It' girl in this book, but mostly I found her annoying especially when things started to change in her love life. Just no.
I felt bad for Leda and Elis through the last half of the book, because it wasn't their fault for what had made them connected, but I could tell it wasn't going to end well.
I'm curious to see what will happen with Watt now that someone else know's his secret an isn't afraid to blackmail him.
I am worried for Mariel though and how she will deal with what has happened, because no one really knew they had a thing and she might not be given the space/time she needs.
As for the rest of the characters I don't really know what to say about them, unless I went on a long rant as to why I didn't really care for them. So instead lets talk about what I did like about the book as a whole.

I loved this book! The way that each chapter was separated into a different persons perspective made it really enjoyable and easy to tell who we were focusing on in that moment, which was something I was worried about when you get this many perspectives in a book. I liked all of the different characters as well and understood why they were doing what they were. Sure they were questionable at times, but getting to see whats going on in everyone head made this book fly by. If I had to compare it to any other type of books already out, I would have to say its gossip with the way most of the characters act/live and then proxy by Alex London with how the lower class system was set up kind of. There were similarities but nothing that looked like a copy to me. Also I would recommend writing the characters name and a specific something about them to help keep it all straight especially if you are reading more than one book at a time. As for who fell of the roof, well that's just something you'll have to read to find out.


"I believe in happiness. I'm just not sure love will actually get you there.”

[Stephanie]

More like 3.5? I went in with no expectations except a whole lot of 'lulz'. I was pleasantly surprised. I'm curious to see how it plays out. I'd read the next one, for sure.

[Nessa Luna]

Edit: After thinking about it for a while, I realised this book is more of a three-star than a four-star rating (okay three-and-a-half but still). So yeah, taking off one star.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a job interview. It went well, if I may say so, but they ended up not hiring me. To cheer myself up, I decided to go to my local bookstore, where I bought The Thousandth Floor. I had heard about it briefly on the internet and had seen pictures of that gorgeous cover, so I decided to just bring it with me. The fact that it took place a hundred years in the future was probably what got me so intrigued.

The Thousandth Floor tells the story of a couple of inhabitants of a gigantic tower built in New York City. We follow Leda, Avery, Eris, Rylin and Watt as they tell their story of what happened before that fateful night when a girl fell, jumped or got pushed off the thousandth floor.

Honestly, I hadn't expected this story to be a Gossip Girl type story but set in the future. The synopsis didn't really make me think that, and neither did the categories on Goodreads. It's not usually a book I would have picked up, but I guess the promise of futuristic gadgets and an immense thousand-floor tower that got me interested in this book. It was rather interesting, but this story could have just taken place in present-day, or even the past, and nothing would have changed at all.

I can't really say I liked any of the characters that much, because most of them seemed like those girls in high school that I would have avoided at all costs. Perhaps Rylin and Watt were a bit more likable, but still I couldn't get myself to like them that much. I did enjoy how the author added both rich characters and characters who lived below 'the hundredth floor' which is similar to the slumps.

There was a lot of drama going on in this book, obviously, and a lot of relationships happening and breaking as well. I liked Rylin's relationship and Eris' but the others weren't really my thing. The big thing that I absolutely hated about this story, which is also a huge reason for me not rating this book higher is the incest. Avery is in love with her brother Atlas, and he loves her back too; and yes I fully understand that they are not related by blood - Atlas was adopted and technically they aren't really doing anything gross but still. It was just gross and I really did not enjoy that part of the story at all

The prologue of the book was what really pulled me in, and I found it a bit of a shame that I had to go through almost 400 pages of chick-lit worthy story-telling before we finally found out what happened on the top of the tower. It was a bit of a plot-twist, as I had been contemplating throughout the book who the girl was and why she had gone over, but I honestly had not expected the thing that happened.

I heard there was going to be a sequel, but honestly I am not 100% sure if I'm going to pick it up. If you love Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars and you love science fiction, you should definitely pick up The Thousandth Floor.

My opinion in one gif: 

[Ashley]

LOVE! Such interesting, different characters. I loved them all!

[Sam@WLABB]

The thousandth floor is the top floor of The Tower, which is a building that is essentially a microcosm of Manhattan as we know it. The wealthier you are, the higher up you live. This book is told from multiple POVs from various heights of the Tower, and thus, various socio-economic levels in futuristic NY. Avery, Eris, and Leda all enjoy life at the top, while Watt and Rylin are “downTower”.

I will not lie, sometimes, I just want a frothy, drama-filled, soap-opera like read, and that is what I got with The Thousandth Floor. Each character has some dirty little secret, and their lives became more and more complicated as they tried to keep that secret under wraps. I enjoyed collecting all the sordid tidbits, and never lost sight of the overarching mystery — who fell from the thousandth floor. There were characters I loved to loved (Eris) and characters I loved to hate (Leda). The futuristic elements were quite fun, and I found myself sometimes wishing I had that thing now.

The Thousandth Floor delivered a story filled with drama and tangled webs, which kept me throughly entertained.