The Thousandth Floor (The Thousandth Floor, #1)

by Katharine McGee

[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.