Unbreakable (Unraveling, #2)

by Elizabeth Norris

24 meets the X Files in the amazing follow up to Unravelling.

Four months after Ben disappeared through the portal to his home universe, Janelle believes she’ll never see him again. Her world is still devastated, but civilisation is slowly rebuilding, and life is finally starting to resume some kind of normality. Until Interverse agent Taylor Barclay shows up. He’s got a problem, and he needs Janelle’s help. Somebody from an alternate universe is running a human trafficking ring – kidnapping people and selling them on different Earths. And Ben, with his unique abilities, is the prime suspect. To make things worse, Janelle learns that someone she cares about – someone from her own world – has become one of the missing.

Now Janelle has five days to track down the real culprit. Five days to locate the missing people before they’re lost forever. Five days to reunite with the boy who stole her heart. Can she uncover the truth before everyone she cares about is killed?

In this heart-pounding sequel to UNRAVELLING, author Elizabeth Norris explores the sacrifices we make to save the people we love and the worlds we’ll travel to find them.

• ISBN13: 9780007460236
• Publish Date: 6 June 2013 (first published 23 April 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 496
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[KitsuneBae]

Equal parts amazing and frustrating.

[Chelsea]

Quick Thoughts:
1. Not quite as good as the first book, but it was still a great sequel.
2. LOTS of character development in this book. I fell in love with all new characters.
3. Still don't like Ben. He was really annoying in this book. I was upset Janelle was with him. She could have done better.
4. I really liked the concept of the doubles in the other worlds. It made everything a little more exciting.
5. A great ending to the series but I still think it could have gone better.

This was way better than book one in the series. It had a better story line and I really enjoyed that, this was pretty hard to put down. Although I was annoyed at the constant pining Janelle was doing for Ben. I got fed up with the paragraphs and paragraphs of Janelle worrying about the same things over and over again. I felt like it slowed the pace of the story right down and led me to get bored often, I found myself skipping these paragraphs of words that weren't needed which was a huge a pain to do, in all honesty I nearly put this down because of that the only reason I didn't was because I wanted to see what happened. The chapters were quite short which was fine until for a while every chapter was two pages, it felt disjointed to me because of that. Other than those things it was a thrilling read.

[Raven]

Read this and other reviews at my blog.

For four months, Janelle has been trying to rebuild her life from the horrible catastrophes around the world, the loss of her father and best friend, and Ben Michaels left. He promised to return to her, and now time is passing and she is wishing and wishing it would happen soon. People in her world are coming up missing, and when Taylor Barclay shows up, she knows that the cases are more than she expected. Someone is running a human-trafficking ring and Ben is the IA's top suspect. Can her and Barclay join forces and prove Ben's innocence, or will Ben and everyone he loves be executed? When the evidence piles up, she begins to wonder if she really knew Ben like she thought.

First things first, I highly recommend that you go read the novella Undone before you read this. It will help you out quite a bit in the way of not spending most of this novel hating Ben Michaels with a passion.

The great thing about these books, is really the writing style. They are written based on time stamps instead of real chapters, which is rather cool honestly, but it's the tone of things that makes them amazing. The tone of Unraveling was more upbeat. It was a fun story that quickly changed as the plot thickened and the suspense increased. Unbreakable didn't have that upbeat mood. It was dark from the start. If you weren't really paying attention and appreciating things, you would almost think that it was boring to read. But the tone that is set is amazing when you really look at it. It's a dark story and the tone of the novel really reinforces that.

The characters are changed. The world basically fell apart. They have all had to grow and mature faster than they should have. They are all still the characters that we know and love. I think the best part of this novel for me though, was Taylor Barclay. You want to hate him because of what you know of him in Unraveling, but I just couldn't. The more of him I saw, the more I liked, until I reached the point where I kept hoping for some romance between him and Janelle. I adore Barclay now.

The plot was very dark and wonderfully told. Pieces were perfectly woven together so that you had trouble predicting things. The character interactions and conflicts were perfectly timed and never took over the plot unless they were meant to.

If you are just reading through and not the type of person who really gets into a novel, you aren't going to like this. If you are the type who analyses things and commits to a novel until the last page, you will appreciate the nuances and writing style the whole way through. This series seems like it will only keep getting darker, and that might not be for everyone. I, however, will be reading the next installment as soon as possible upon release.

[Amber]

I'm going to give you a fair warning, this review is likely going to be a sobfest. It may even sound like I'm ranting towards the end, and if that happens then I promise it's a good type of rant. Unbreakable broke my heart, you see, and then tore it out and stomped on it for good measure. It's been a while since a book made me feel this way, and I hope it never happens again. (That was a lie, I love it when books hurt me like this.)

Full review on Books of Amber

[jnikkir]

I thoroughly enjoyed this series (duology... whatever). I had never read a book/books about parallel universes before, even though they seem to be becoming more of a 'thing' now. I just hadn't gotten to reading one. But the theory (whether sciencey or sci-fi) has always fascinated me. And I didn't realize that's where things were headed when I started the first book, so that blew my mind. Suddenly a sort of 'possibly-paranormal-romance/murder mystery thriller', turned into an awesome scifi action adventure which was AWESOME. It was that switch that I loved about Unraveling.

Unbreakable starts off solidly as a scifi with a dash (or maybe more than a dash) of post-apocalyptic. Janelle is helping to rebuild her community after the devastating events in Unraveling, and things are just starting to get back to "normal" - or whatever they can salvage of it. She's helping Struz as a sort of agent-in-training, and has been specifically helping to investigate a huge string of disappearances, when Barclay shows up asking for her help (I know, right?!), and her friend ends up disappearing as well. At that point, nothing is going to stop Janelle from going with Barclay and getting to the bottom of the disappearances.

Janelle is seriously one of the best things about this series. She is one tough cookie. She is gutted over losing Ben, but she never lets that get in her way, even when it means she has to ignore those feelings in order to be there for the people she cares about. Sure, she does end up going with Barclay to find Ben and rescue his family from execution, and ultimately find out who's behind the kidnappings and disappearances. But what convinces her to go is the fact that she needs to protect her universe from whoever is kidnapping people, not the fact that she wants to find and be reunited with Ben. She doesn't rush to abandon her responsibilities at the first chance to find him; she has a sense of duty and protective instinct for her community, and isn't just thinking about rushing away at the first sign of him. I liked that.

Another (surprising) thing I loved about this book was... Barclay. Specifically Janelle and Barclay's (grudging, at first) friendship. Their growth from bickering allies, into a team, into actual friends, is so well done. And Barclay ended up as one of my favorite characters because of it.

Other than the awesome characters, the plot in this one is stellar, and absolutely edge-of-your seat. After the setup in the beginning, and then Janelle and Barclay embarking on their covert mission to find the kidnappers/trafficking ring, it's all action all the time. Twists and turns and suspense and drama and thrills and just... nonstop, flip-the-pages-as-fast-as-you-can, excitement. SUPER fast-paced - but at the same time, I didn't think the character-development suffered at all. There was amazing balance of action without losing any characterization, and I really enjoyed that.

Now... all that being said, there was one issue that made this book lose the 5-star-sparkle, for me. And I feel a little bit badly, docking a whole star for this, but it did make me a bit less enthusiastic about this one vs. Unraveling... Anyway, I really wanted Ben to be around more. I was expecting him to come back pretty quickly after the opening, and then I was waiting for it... and waiting for it... for what felt like forever. And when we finally got him back, I was a little disappointed because it didn't really feel like I expected it to. I do think it's realistic, after Ben reappears in the story, what Norris ended up doing with Janelle and Ben and their relationship. I just wanted a lot more sunshine and rainbows, so personally, that was a little disappointing. (I am really sorry for the vagueness... I just don't want to spoil anything!!) Also, I feel like there was just less romance overall. Unraveling was very well done in the "balancing romance with nonstop action" department - we got our cute couple without sacrificing excitement, and our excitement without sacrificing our cute couple (well, until the end). Unbreakable is a lot lighter on the romance with a lot more emphasis on the excitement and action.

Anyway, though, nothing I just mentioned has any impact on the fact that I will totally be recommending this series to anyone and everyone I think might possibly enjoy it. Overall, it's FANTASTIC, and I still can't believe that this was Elizabeth Norris's debut series. I mean, come on.

PS: Shoutout to Elijah, because he is my favorite forever. I love that kid. ...That is all.