The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
_fallinglight_'s review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.75
I don't know what to feel about this book. I appreciate the pov weirdness. It was my first time reading a book in second person. I had always intended to but put it off, this one kept coming up in my tbr what-to-read next random picker spinner and so I chose to give it a try. It was mysterious to a degree and the 2nd person narrative added the mood but after a while it followed a lot of cliches and the supporting characters felt hollow and left me feeling very underwhelmed and without many good thoughts about it. Honestly the 2nd person pov was the adhesive keeping this flimsy story together. And it's not like I was expecting something, I was honestly head empty no thoughts throughout and it was still without much substance to me. I did like the explanation of who was behind the hunt of “Sunny” (aka me?). Wasn't expecting the death game stuff with a twist and I liked that. Most of the time anything “rich people are f*cked” earns your story cool points with me. But that's about it with this book. Don't get me started on the romance. Blegh! I really didn't dnf'd it bc it was short and I wanted to add a book to my November wrap-up. I don't know if I wanna read the sequel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, and Injury/Injury detail
nickoliver's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
So this ... was disappointing.
Honestly, I feel like this story had potential. It's about a girl who wakes up on some train tracks without any memory of who she is or how she got there. She realises very soon that some people are after her and tries to find out the truth about them and herself while simultaneously trying not to get killed by them first. So it could've been a really exciting, fast-paced read! Unfortunately, it just wasn't.
My main problem was how little the plot focused on the mystery itself, so much so that by the end of the book, you still don't really know what's going on. This book is incapable of standing on its own; if you want to know the whole story, you'll have to read the sequel. Which feels really cheap to me; in my opinion, even books in a series should be able to work on their own, but that's definitely not the case here.
What was infuriating about that was that the few information we did get about the mystery were actually really interesting! It is kinda grisly and not what I expected, and the discussions you could have about that could be very engaging! Why couldn't Carey expand on that a bit more? Instead, all you get in this book are a million chases, a protagonist making the most irritating decisions that are basically the opposite of the kind of personality you're led to believe she has, and a romance that has no place even being there.
Like. This girl knows she's being hunted, yet she keeps going out in public with nothing to disguise her with but ... a cap? And by putting her hair in a bun, like that even counts as a disguise? She goes to places she knows are dangerous without so much as thinking twice about it. She gets someone else killed by accident (someone who, mind you, was actively trying to help her). She keeps asking obvious questions but ignores the ones that she should be asking herself. GIRL. YOU HAVE A BRAIN. TRY USING IT SOMETIMES.
Then let me talk a bit more about that romance. It's between the protagonist and a boy named Ben. Now, she meets Ben on that first day she wakes up without any memories. He helps her out with something and then gives her his phone number in case she has an emergency. When they meet again, he offers her a place to stay after hearing her story. And like ... first of all, the fact that he just believes her pretty crazy story is weird enough. But then to let her stay at his place, like he has no sense for self-preservation? And she just agrees, despite the fact that she knows by this point that there are people chasing her and that she doesn't know anything about Ben other than the fact that he sells drugs in public bathrooms and has family problems? Maybe that's just me, but if I were to wake up one day with no memory and knew that I should be distrustful of other people, I wouldn't go home with a literal stranger? What, does she think that just because he's her age, he won't be a bad guy? Seriously, nothing about this made sense.
The girl and Ben also have zero chemistry. Zilch. Nada. But nonetheless, Carey kept writing about them getting closer and them making out, and like ... I wanted to know more about the mystery, not read page after page of a mediocre, boring romance about a boy with the personality of a toaster and a girl with not enough working brain cells. Ben was straight up ready to leave his life behind and run away with her after knowing her for like, a week. This entire story would have been so much better if it had no romance in it, period.
Characters aside from the protagonist and Ben are, unfortunately, not much better. The only actually interesting one is Izzy, but all the others are pretty one-dimensional and bland. Even the villains didn't really sweep me off my feet; I just didn't get enough insight into their motivations or personalities.
The structure of the writing in this book is also a bit of an acquired taste. Specifically, the story is told in second person present. I didn't mind it for the most part, but it definitely took a while to get used to. Personally, what bothered me more were the random chapters from other people's POVs, told in third person, that were sprinkled throughout. They took me out of the story so much! First of, every single chapter was from someone else's POV. They were mostly the POVs from some of the bad guys, but not all of them were, so there wasn't even any consistency. And since most of these characters aren't even mentioned by name - or not a name you'd recognise -, you didn't even really know who they were or where they were or even what they were talking about half the time. Moreover, they didn't offer any real insight into anything? Almost nothing ever came to play in the actual plot, so I just didn't quite understand why these chapters were included? They overall just confused the crap out of me.
Lastly, the ending. Like I mentioned above, you still don't really know anything of significance at the end of the book. Some details, yes, but nothing concrete enough to understand what was happening. Which I found was shitty enough. But then the book ends on a literal cliffhanger that comes out of freaking nowhere, and it just felt very random in my opinion. And after experiencing some cheap plot twists that probably surprised no one but our darling protagonist, I ended the book being very frustrated and annoyed.
Overall, I just feel like the story had a lot more potential that just wasn't being used. The plot was boring and infuriating, the characters were bland and one-dimensional, and the romance was just unnecessary. I did read the book very fast, I'll give it that, and I will read the sequel pretty soon because the way this book ended was just too unsatisfying for me to leave it here (and also because my library has it). But still, I didn't really like most of the book.
Honestly, I feel like this story had potential. It's about a girl who wakes up on some train tracks without any memory of who she is or how she got there. She realises very soon that some people are after her and tries to find out the truth about them and herself while simultaneously trying not to get killed by them first. So it could've been a really exciting, fast-paced read! Unfortunately, it just wasn't.
My main problem was how little the plot focused on the mystery itself, so much so that by the end of the book, you still don't really know what's going on. This book is incapable of standing on its own; if you want to know the whole story, you'll have to read the sequel. Which feels really cheap to me; in my opinion, even books in a series should be able to work on their own, but that's definitely not the case here.
What was infuriating about that was that the few information we did get about the mystery were actually really interesting! It is kinda grisly and not what I expected, and the discussions you could have about that could be very engaging! Why couldn't Carey expand on that a bit more? Instead, all you get in this book are a million chases, a protagonist making the most irritating decisions that are basically the opposite of the kind of personality you're led to believe she has, and a romance that has no place even being there.
Like. This girl knows she's being hunted, yet she keeps going out in public with nothing to disguise her with but ... a cap? And by putting her hair in a bun, like that even counts as a disguise? She goes to places she knows are dangerous without so much as thinking twice about it. She gets someone else killed by accident (someone who, mind you, was actively trying to help her). She keeps asking obvious questions but ignores the ones that she should be asking herself. GIRL. YOU HAVE A BRAIN. TRY USING IT SOMETIMES.
Then let me talk a bit more about that romance. It's between the protagonist and a boy named Ben. Now, she meets Ben on that first day she wakes up without any memories. He helps her out with something and then gives her his phone number in case she has an emergency. When they meet again, he offers her a place to stay after hearing her story. And like ... first of all, the fact that he just believes her pretty crazy story is weird enough. But then to let her stay at his place, like he has no sense for self-preservation? And she just agrees, despite the fact that she knows by this point that there are people chasing her and that she doesn't know anything about Ben other than the fact that he sells drugs in public bathrooms and has family problems? Maybe that's just me, but if I were to wake up one day with no memory and knew that I should be distrustful of other people, I wouldn't go home with a literal stranger? What, does she think that just because he's her age, he won't be a bad guy? Seriously, nothing about this made sense.
The girl and Ben also have zero chemistry. Zilch. Nada. But nonetheless, Carey kept writing about them getting closer and them making out, and like ... I wanted to know more about the mystery, not read page after page of a mediocre, boring romance about a boy with the personality of a toaster and a girl with not enough working brain cells. Ben was straight up ready to leave his life behind and run away with her after knowing her for like, a week. This entire story would have been so much better if it had no romance in it, period.
Characters aside from the protagonist and Ben are, unfortunately, not much better. The only actually interesting one is Izzy, but all the others are pretty one-dimensional and bland. Even the villains didn't really sweep me off my feet; I just didn't get enough insight into their motivations or personalities.
The structure of the writing in this book is also a bit of an acquired taste. Specifically, the story is told in second person present. I didn't mind it for the most part, but it definitely took a while to get used to. Personally, what bothered me more were the random chapters from other people's POVs, told in third person, that were sprinkled throughout. They took me out of the story so much! First of, every single chapter was from someone else's POV. They were mostly the POVs from some of the bad guys, but not all of them were, so there wasn't even any consistency. And since most of these characters aren't even mentioned by name - or not a name you'd recognise -, you didn't even really know who they were or where they were or even what they were talking about half the time. Moreover, they didn't offer any real insight into anything? Almost nothing ever came to play in the actual plot, so I just didn't quite understand why these chapters were included? They overall just confused the crap out of me.
Lastly, the ending. Like I mentioned above, you still don't really know anything of significance at the end of the book. Some details, yes, but nothing concrete enough to understand what was happening. Which I found was shitty enough. But then the book ends on a literal cliffhanger that comes out of freaking nowhere, and it just felt very random in my opinion. And after experiencing some cheap plot twists that probably surprised no one but our darling protagonist, I ended the book being very frustrated and annoyed.
Overall, I just feel like the story had a lot more potential that just wasn't being used. The plot was boring and infuriating, the characters were bland and one-dimensional, and the romance was just unnecessary. I did read the book very fast, I'll give it that, and I will read the sequel pretty soon because the way this book ended was just too unsatisfying for me to leave it here (and also because my library has it). But still, I didn't really like most of the book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Gun violence
Minor: Kidnapping
Also CW for amnesia
More...