Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

The Toll by Neal Shusterman

1 review

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adventurous tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

**includes spoilers for the first two books in the series**

Endura has sunk, Citra and Rowan are assumed dead, Scythe Goddard has set himself up to wield unlimited power, and the Thunderhead has gone silent for everyone except Greyson Tolliver. With Goddard’s biggest opponents dead, and the Thunderhead unable to interfere in scythe business, is there anything that can stop him?

The writing style in this book is unique, but made the book much more interesting to read. There are a variety of plots and subplots in this novel, but they are all woven together to push the main plot foreword. While this is a long book, there isn’t a moment of lull in the action; everything Shusterman wrote has a purpose to the plot.
The limited amount of romance in this entire series was refreshing. I love romance, but it is often included with no real benefit to the plot. I was actually surprised that this book includes the romance, considering that the first two books in the trilogy contained essentially none, but in this book it added to the plot, and created a bigger emotional response.
The ending is teetering on the edge of being either brilliant, or literally dues ex machina. But I’m not mad about it? The more I think about it and the more time it’s been since I finished, the more I think this book is brilliant. Very few authors could successfully write a plot twist like this, but Neal Shusterman pulls it off beautifully.

Overall, I gave this book 4 stars. It was a well-written, interesting novel, but I found the plot twists at the end to be a big leap, even though it was pulled off.
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