Never Fade (The Darkest Minds, #2)

by Alexandra Bracken

[ladygrey]

Fairly early on in this book I moved from being unimpressed to disdain. the paragraphs and paragraphs of description bothered me, even more so when they're in the middle of action or dialog. I just so don't care.

Even worse, there’s too much cursing in this book. Not even YA, TV-14 cursing. Like straight up cable network, hard cursing. It’s beyond annoying. It's inappropriate and makes me not want to read the book. It's the one reason I won't add this to my YA shelf.

Also, the actions don’t line up again. Like, they’re riding under a bus in the luggage compartment but she’s keeping her eyes on the road. There are no windows down there! Or Liam is behind her but then kissing her forehead. There's fewer of them but things just don't line up.

The main problem with this book is there is too much Ruby and she’s not interesting. Jude’s barely interesting. Cole is interesting but he’s there and then he’s gone. I keep reading it but not because it’s compelling, because there’d nothing else to do. Finally, around chapter 23 it got marginally interesting - but, seriously, chapter 23! Not only did interesting characters come back into the story but I also started skipping entire paragraphs of setting description and Ruby's internal musing. I kept it to the dialog and the action and everything moved much more quickly and was moderately interesting.