Gone (Gone, #1)

by Michael Grant

[Stephanie]

Three starts because I am indecisive. I liked this book, I did. But at the same time, I was also bored by it. Parts seemed excessive, rambling and dragged on, when they could have been shortened and made the book far more dramatic. It was seriously 150 pages too long and it just seemed a bit repetitive.

One of the other issues I had, and perhaps it's just how I read it, but was the massive amount of characters introduced right away. I felt that I spent most of my time trying to figure out who was who and picture them in my mind. There are very few character descriptions (Astrid is blonde, Sam is a 'surfer' kid, Caine had dark eyes) that didn't give me a clear idea of this person. Luckily the cover of this book has some of the characters on it that I used for reference. Maybe these things don't bother other people, but when I have a hard time seeing the character in my mind, I have a hard time remembering them and their importance throughout the book. Lots of cronies, lots of town kids, lots of people in general with not a lot of scenes but had the time to be fully introduce.

Blah, sounds like a rant, but I think if the book is going to 550 pages, maybe not dropping all the characters on me at once would be nice.

Anyway, I liked it. And I didn't. Good idea, interesting premise, etc etc. Just a little bit cyclical in some parts, or unnecessarily long and they didn't need to be.