Reviewed by Nessa Luna on
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This has not changed my opinion on the book in any way.
When I heard about a TV series based on a book that was yet to come out, I got very curious. But like with almost any book that gets made into a movie or TV show, I wanted to read the book first. I kept adding it to my basket on Book Depository and deleting it, over and over again, until a couple of days ago when I logged into Netgalley and saw the full book there as a 'read now'. I decided to go for it and started reading it almost immediately. I was quite disappointed. So disappointed in fact, that I stopped reading the book at about 53%.
First of all, I noticed that the story was written from a third person narrative. This is not my favourite narrative style at all, I am more a first person narrative person. But I guessed I could get over that, and I did. That was not the thing that bothered me the most. There were four different point of views in the part that I read, and I don't know if there were more added in the part that I didn't read, but actually I don't care about that. I dislike multiple POV's a lot, especially if it's not executed well. The only thing I might have liked was Glass' (what the hell kind of name is that?) point of view, because she was the only one who stayed behind on the ship so we could have *sings* the best of both worlds. Not that it was good, Glass' chapters were really boring actually, basically just her and her friends buying fabrics for some party and her pining for her ex-boyfriend who already has a new girlfriend.
Clarke (a girl, I thought this was a boy at first), Wells (a boy), and Bellamy (another boy, I thought this was the girl) (the names, the names!!!) are the other three who are blessed to have their own chapters, but personally two of them could have been eliminated, because they are all in the same place, they are all on Earth. Of course, they do all kinds of different things, but still I didn't think all those POV's were needed. I would have been fine with just two POV's, from - for example - Clarke and Glass.
When I got over those two dislikes, there came another wave of dislike, flashbacks. I H A T E flashbacks. Sure, they were executed well, they were in italics instead of normal like the rest of the story, but still, I do not like flashbacks at all. I basically skimmed most of the flashbacks that were in the part that I read, and after a while I just stopped reading them at all. Sure, I would love to find out more about their lives, but not through flashbacks. Let them tell someone or something like that, but no flashbacks please! Especially since I thought these flashbacks didn't really add anything to the story. Some of them might have, but I hadn't paid enough attention to actually realised that.
And then there was the bomb called a love triangle. Perhaps there were two, I don't know, I stopped paying attention after the first one became clear. I guess you can guess who the love-triangle is between, yes, exactly. In case you can't guess, it's between Clarke, Wells and Bellamy, surprise surprise! Needless to say, after a while I just stopped caring for this book, and telling myself that I would read 'one more chapter', and then I would see if I wanted to read on or not. I did this for about four or five more chapters, before I just completely lost my ability to care.
I have to admit, the writing was quite good, the story just didn't interest me at all. I thought it would be an awesome science fiction story, with maybe a bit of romance (as usual in a Young Adult book), but what I got was a romance book with not so much spacey-wacey stuff I had hoped for. Such a shame. Maybe I'll just watch the TV show instead.
My opinion on this book in one gif:
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 24 August, 2014: Finished reading
- 24 August, 2014: Reviewed