Metaltown

by Kristen Simmons

Best friends Colin and Ty live one day at a time - the only way it's possible to survive in Metaltown, where money is in short supply, illness runs rampant, and street rules are the highest law. With the other near starving teenagers of Metaltown, they work long, gruelling hours for pennies at the Small Parts factory, attaching fuses to bombs and manufacturing weapons. When they're worked to the bone, they seek shelter where they can find it, and do it all again the next day. Meanwhile, in the wealthy River District across town, Lena Hampton spends her days learning useless ancient languages and the art of being a lady...all the while secretly studying the ins and outs of Hampton Industries, dreaming that one day her father will take her seriously and she'll become the first woman to run the family's expansive network of factories and businesses. Colin's, Ty's, and Lena's paths intersect when Ty is injured on the job and Lena, desperate to prove herself, fires her. In one morning, their dreams of a better future disappear, and Colin and Ty must find a way to transform their own lives and Lena's into ones that matter.

• ISBN10: 0765336626
• ISBN13: 9780765336620
• Publish Date: 20 September 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 25 May 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Starscape
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[liz089]

I enjoyed reading this book, it was fun, easy to read and had an interesting plot.
I did have some issues with it, mainly with the ending... and how I feel like not everything was answered this way.. I think the ending could have been done better.
But overal it was entertaining, 3.5 stars, but I will round it up to 4.

[sa090]

If anything I have to give props to Kristen Simmons for making me feel like I read 3 different books while reading one, just from my very contrasting feelings in the 25%, 50% and the last 50% marks of this book.

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This was the weirdest experience ever for me while reading, I never imagined that I would feel like I'm reading 3 different books in a book that is under 400 pages. The first 25% of this book weren't terrible per say but it easily made me think that there is nothing new here, it was kind of boring as well and it wasn't far away from the dropped pile for me or the DNF pile as they call it in the book community but I still stuck around because I wanted to learn more about Metaltown and the world. The characters really take some time to get used to in these 25%, all protagonists annoyed me in some way and they weren't that interesting to read about but once we got going on a bit it became a little better.

The next 25% of the book had me in seething rage from almost the start of it till the end, omg it's been a very long time since I got this angry at something. Romance is a terrible thing to have in a book for me when it could easily be gripping, thrilling and as tragic as the rest of it without it. Before I read this book, I read a review that said the romance is a slow burner but I disagree since the romance is literally insta-love without a single logical reason other than it being along the cliche lines of 'different, forbidden or based on naivety' it was an eyesore, unneeded and frankly the adding of it ruined this quarter of the book for me when the important and interesting things of this STANDALONE novel got shoved to the side. It's even worse when there is my ultimate hated trope in this genre being sprinkled on top, alongside the idolizing of the love interest on the expense of friends. Hate is a strong word but damn, I hated this so much!

The last 50% of the book comes along and it's like all the suffering I had to endure in the beginning of it was paying off now; the pace got a lot quicker (not that I had an issue with the pace before), relevant things kept taking the spotlight, I got to read more instances of world building and the events got way more interesting. The romance remained annoying and unneeded but the instances were far apart that it wasn't as noticeable anymore. Besides, seeing the tragic world and how alive Kristen Simmons made it out to be was an awesome journey. This is a pretty common idea with dystopian series but still, seeing the cruel world these characters live in made me feel really sorry for them and cheer so much for them when they tried to make a difference.

A thing I really enjoyed in the book are the hidden stories to some characters. They would look so strong, so proper and so perfect before they start talking and you see that no, they're not. In this already very tragic and cruel world it was interesting to see the very deep and painful scars these character carried with them.

Now if I come to talk about the events or rather the "plot twists" in the book, I unfortunately saw all of them coming. So I wasn't really surprised by any of them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that me getting them made it boring and annoying because that's not true. Her writing style is very gripping when she gets to the good stuff so whenever that took focus, I was really glued to the page (or screen, since I only read ebooks). As I mentioned earlier the romance was terrible for me and I honestly wished that she omitted all the pages she wasted on that part of the story to expand more on the other parts that didn't get a lot of spotlight like the food testing, the gangs, other factories or honestly a proper epilogue.

The book has this open-ish ending that I didn't enjoy as much, a proper epilogue where there is a very noticeable result would've been a much better ending for a standalone book but I guess that's just me. I'm interested in reading more of her books but if all the romance is going to be like this then I'm hesitant. My TBR is already big (minuscule compared to some) so we'll see until then 🙃

Final rating: 3/5
As weak as that rating might be