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emma71662837's review against another edition
4.0
Tara Brown crafts a good story around a special heroine.
Emma has been alone in survival mode since the age of nine when the world changed.
Prompted by her father, she escaped to the edge of civilization. During this she meets 15-year-old Anna and her older brother Jake.
She has a special friendship with Anna which was probably my favourite part of the storyline.
I enjoyed the world building and am definitely intrigued as to where the story goes next.
Emma has been alone in survival mode since the age of nine when the world changed.
Prompted by her father, she escaped to the edge of civilization. During this she meets 15-year-old Anna and her older brother Jake.
She has a special friendship with Anna which was probably my favourite part of the storyline.
I enjoyed the world building and am definitely intrigued as to where the story goes next.
vikingwolf's review against another edition
Since the apocalypse, Em has lived alone with her wolf Leo, taking supplies from nearby houses and staying away from people. Then Anna knocks on her door looking for help for her brother Jake who is injured and Em's life starts to spiral out of control.
OK lets start with the 'likes'. I loved Leo the wolf. He had more personality, charm and common sense than the rest of the cast put together and I just wanted to take him home and cuddle him. The book also started out ok when we were following Em as she raided her food stores and shared with us how people were not to be trusted and that she was a good survivalist. Then comes Insta-love and the book goes downhill.
Em might have had little choice but to help Anna and Jake but she pretty much trusts them instantly and falls in love with Jake. Seriously how often do you fall in love with the very first guy you see at college or school, yet it happens in seconds in these books. It bugs me so much. Then Em the great survivor is wandering around outside with fantasies of her and Jake and doesn't manage to notice the military guy stalking her until she gets shot. That is dumb on a whole new level for a survivalist! Jake is meant to be older than the girls but he has the common sense of a dog turd, crashing his way through the forest, talking loudly soon after the man shoots Em. Shut your mouth you moron! Do you WANT to die? I wanted to shoot him myself or see Leo savage him to death. He is so childish. Em also gets more annoying as the book moves on. The 'trust nobody' girl decides to trust everyone she meets in the dangerous town which leads her into trouble countless times.
Then Em meet's Jake brother and now she is suddenly in love with him as well. Oh come on! Falling in love with both brothers in a matter of minutes after meeting each one is just crazy stuff and I was pulling my hair out by this point. And Em is such a stupid cow that you wonder why any of them would be interested in her. And the two brothers are both idiot immature rude asshats that no sane girl would want to get involved with.
It takes forever in this book to get answers to what is happening. What is the infection? Why are the women being taken? When we do find out what caused this apocalypse I had to laugh out loud. Of course a tiny band of rebels living in the forest know everything and here it is. It seems that the United Nations engineered a plague to stop world pollution which mutated into a killer disease and now they are taking white women away to breeding labs to repopulate the world. WTF? Now, anybody who watches the news would know that the UN can barely arrange a meeting never mind let loose a bio plague. So who exactly was involved in this? Which countries knew about it? Why just white women? Aren't African nations objecting to this? Where are the answers to these questions? To be honest by this point I was so sick of the stupid love triangle and plot holes and annoying characters that I decided not to finish the book.
I'm not going to be reading the rest of this series or anything else by the author. Not for me I'm afraid!
OK lets start with the 'likes'. I loved Leo the wolf. He had more personality, charm and common sense than the rest of the cast put together and I just wanted to take him home and cuddle him. The book also started out ok when we were following Em as she raided her food stores and shared with us how people were not to be trusted and that she was a good survivalist. Then comes Insta-love and the book goes downhill.
Em might have had little choice but to help Anna and Jake but she pretty much trusts them instantly and falls in love with Jake. Seriously how often do you fall in love with the very first guy you see at college or school, yet it happens in seconds in these books. It bugs me so much. Then Em the great survivor is wandering around outside with fantasies of her and Jake and doesn't manage to notice the military guy stalking her until she gets shot. That is dumb on a whole new level for a survivalist! Jake is meant to be older than the girls but he has the common sense of a dog turd, crashing his way through the forest, talking loudly soon after the man shoots Em. Shut your mouth you moron! Do you WANT to die? I wanted to shoot him myself or see Leo savage him to death. He is so childish. Em also gets more annoying as the book moves on. The 'trust nobody' girl decides to trust everyone she meets in the dangerous town which leads her into trouble countless times.
Then Em meet's Jake brother and now she is suddenly in love with him as well. Oh come on! Falling in love with both brothers in a matter of minutes after meeting each one is just crazy stuff and I was pulling my hair out by this point. And Em is such a stupid cow that you wonder why any of them would be interested in her. And the two brothers are both idiot immature rude asshats that no sane girl would want to get involved with.
It takes forever in this book to get answers to what is happening. What is the infection? Why are the women being taken? When we do find out what caused this apocalypse I had to laugh out loud. Of course a tiny band of rebels living in the forest know everything and here it is. It seems that the United Nations engineered a plague to stop world pollution which mutated into a killer disease and now they are taking white women away to breeding labs to repopulate the world. WTF? Now, anybody who watches the news would know that the UN can barely arrange a meeting never mind let loose a bio plague. So who exactly was involved in this? Which countries knew about it? Why just white women? Aren't African nations objecting to this? Where are the answers to these questions? To be honest by this point I was so sick of the stupid love triangle and plot holes and annoying characters that I decided not to finish the book.
I'm not going to be reading the rest of this series or anything else by the author. Not for me I'm afraid!
jen286's review against another edition
2.0
This review was originally posted to Jen in Bookland
*Note: Some slight spoilers ahead
Born started off so promising. I was drawn into the story and loving it until about half way through. Then things started to fall apart a bit for me. Emma started to becoming super annoying and a lame love triangle was developing and I just didn't enjoy the last half of the book. A good idea, but the main character, or really most of the characters, got on my nerves by the end of the book. So much so that I didn't want to continue on to the next one.
Emma has been on her own for the past ten years. Ever since the world as we know it was destroyed and her father died. She has a pet wolf, but that has been her only companion since she was 9 years old. So she is not so good with people as she has hardly been around them. Her father taught her to survive, to take care of herself, to be independent. He taught her to not let other people in because that can get you killed. Stay by yourself, pay attention, don't do anything stupid and survive. So that is what she does. There are lots of bad people still living, seems like only the worst survived what happened, as well as the infected. I really enjoyed the world that was created. The ideas were pretty cool even if I don't know everything yet. The others, the infected, the breeding camps, everything was really fascinating and kept me wanting to read more.
So Emma is on her own for years until one night she gets a knock on her door. A girl, Anna, who is asking for her help. Her brother Jake is stuck in a hole not too far away and will surely die if she doesn't help. Anna doesn't care if Emma kills her just as long as she promises to help her brother. And this is where Emma starts to change. Unfortunately we don't get to see the change happen, we are just told it does. The book just skips time and Emma is all caring about these new people now and not going to kill them, will do anything to save them, etc. I didn't really understand since I didn't get to see the change, but I just went with it.
Then when Anna is in danger Emma runs off to save her. She meets some allies, a group of people who are actually living peacefully in the woods and trying to make a new life where they can. Through them she gets some help and starts to try and save everyone (though it was the beginning of Emma turning into a super annoying character). Once she meets everyone that is where the stupid love triangle comes in. She obviously likes one boy more than the other, but is very resistant to the idea. Plus the boy she likes is kind of a jerk and not cool at times. It was not so good. Then she risks her life to save one person, then decides she must save everyone! Every single person, except the people she indiscriminately kills because they are on the inside. Who knows some of them could be good people, she knows this as some of them helped her before, but let's not think about that. She gets all crazy by the end, runs off willy nilly and does whatever she wants. She won't listen to anyone, won't stop for a second and make a plan. Nope. If someone questions her she just gets angry and runs off by herself because that is smart. Good thing she is super awesome and nothing can stop her....
She also is super judgmental of most of the other people she meets. She hates the girl who also seems to like the boy she likes. She even goes off victim blaming her for being raped which is a HUGE no no. She was horrid. Absolutely horrid to the girl who wears clothing that Emma deems inappropriate. Plus thinks she is a whore because of said clothes and that the boy she likes likes that girl to. Or at least used to. Her and her judgmental self got on my last nerve. The victim blaming was the last straw. That happened near the end and really made me say nope to reading more of this series. I just can't stomach stuff like that. Not cool. Not cool at all. I just wanted to tell Emma to get over herself and stop treating everyone else like crap because you think you are so much better than them. I hated it. Such a shame as I did really like the first half. I was all in and couldn't put it down until Emma because someone I hated. Oh well.
*Note: Some slight spoilers ahead
Born started off so promising. I was drawn into the story and loving it until about half way through. Then things started to fall apart a bit for me. Emma started to becoming super annoying and a lame love triangle was developing and I just didn't enjoy the last half of the book. A good idea, but the main character, or really most of the characters, got on my nerves by the end of the book. So much so that I didn't want to continue on to the next one.
Emma has been on her own for the past ten years. Ever since the world as we know it was destroyed and her father died. She has a pet wolf, but that has been her only companion since she was 9 years old. So she is not so good with people as she has hardly been around them. Her father taught her to survive, to take care of herself, to be independent. He taught her to not let other people in because that can get you killed. Stay by yourself, pay attention, don't do anything stupid and survive. So that is what she does. There are lots of bad people still living, seems like only the worst survived what happened, as well as the infected. I really enjoyed the world that was created. The ideas were pretty cool even if I don't know everything yet. The others, the infected, the breeding camps, everything was really fascinating and kept me wanting to read more.
So Emma is on her own for years until one night she gets a knock on her door. A girl, Anna, who is asking for her help. Her brother Jake is stuck in a hole not too far away and will surely die if she doesn't help. Anna doesn't care if Emma kills her just as long as she promises to help her brother. And this is where Emma starts to change. Unfortunately we don't get to see the change happen, we are just told it does. The book just skips time and Emma is all caring about these new people now and not going to kill them, will do anything to save them, etc. I didn't really understand since I didn't get to see the change, but I just went with it.
Then when Anna is in danger Emma runs off to save her. She meets some allies, a group of people who are actually living peacefully in the woods and trying to make a new life where they can. Through them she gets some help and starts to try and save everyone (though it was the beginning of Emma turning into a super annoying character). Once she meets everyone that is where the stupid love triangle comes in. She obviously likes one boy more than the other, but is very resistant to the idea. Plus the boy she likes is kind of a jerk and not cool at times. It was not so good. Then she risks her life to save one person, then decides she must save everyone! Every single person, except the people she indiscriminately kills because they are on the inside. Who knows some of them could be good people, she knows this as some of them helped her before, but let's not think about that. She gets all crazy by the end, runs off willy nilly and does whatever she wants. She won't listen to anyone, won't stop for a second and make a plan. Nope. If someone questions her she just gets angry and runs off by herself because that is smart. Good thing she is super awesome and nothing can stop her....
She also is super judgmental of most of the other people she meets. She hates the girl who also seems to like the boy she likes. She even goes off victim blaming her for being raped which is a HUGE no no. She was horrid. Absolutely horrid to the girl who wears clothing that Emma deems inappropriate. Plus thinks she is a whore because of said clothes and that the boy she likes likes that girl to. Or at least used to. Her and her judgmental self got on my last nerve. The victim blaming was the last straw. That happened near the end and really made me say nope to reading more of this series. I just can't stomach stuff like that. Not cool. Not cool at all. I just wanted to tell Emma to get over herself and stop treating everyone else like crap because you think you are so much better than them. I hated it. Such a shame as I did really like the first half. I was all in and couldn't put it down until Emma because someone I hated. Oh well.
izzieburns's review against another edition
5.0
I have to admit, the only reason I read this book was because it was free on the Kindle Store. I would never pick up a Zombie Apocalypse book and have never been drawn to that genre. The blurb of this book however didn't mention zombies, so I just thought it was an apocalyptic book. Who can refuse a free book?
That being said, despite never wanting to read about zombies and actually really despising zombies in general, I absolutely adored this book!
The characters in this book were amazing from the start, but the character development just made them even better.
The book always kept me on edge, and I flew through 70% of it in less than an afternoon.
I can't wait to read the next ones, especially because it ends on a cliffhanger!
All I can say is get this on your kindle while it's still free! For someone who hates zombies, I adored this "zombie" book (though zombies don't play a massive part in it).
That being said, despite never wanting to read about zombies and actually really despising zombies in general, I absolutely adored this book!
The characters in this book were amazing from the start, but the character development just made them even better.
The book always kept me on edge, and I flew through 70% of it in less than an afternoon.
I can't wait to read the next ones, especially because it ends on a cliffhanger!
All I can say is get this on your kindle while it's still free! For someone who hates zombies, I adored this "zombie" book (though zombies don't play a massive part in it).
jennchandler's review
3.0
3.5. Not bad. A bit repetitive. Interesting story, but nothing new. Worth a read I suppose.
bluestarshells's review
2.0
2.5 Where do I begin? The basis for this book was intriguing. It was a solid idea but terribly executed.
The main character Em is decently developed yet a bit confusing. She's been alone for the last 10 years and at 19 she's extremely immature (which might be expected) but she knows things that are explained away because she was either told when she was 9 (who remembers that?!) or she read them in romance novels or survival books... yeah. No.
But ok I can let that slide.
I sill see two bigger blaring problems. The first is that though the characters are developed decently, the relationships are not. People become attached to each other, bffs for life, in the matter of hours. Every time I turned around Em was confessing love for some friend or other and I just couldn't see why or what she liked about them at all. Ok sure she's been deprived of human relationships for ten years so maybe she's desperate. But it's not just her. Her love interests and her new friends absolutely adore her in the time it takes to walk from one place to the next. I kept finding myself stopping and wondering if I missed something and flipping back to see how we got from point A to point B.
Which leads me to the next flaw. The author skips around soooo much. It's like she missed 4th grade writing where you learn smooth transitions. She jumps from here to there- quite literally- all the time. Again Em spends like zero time in one place and the whole book takes place in the span of a few weeks. The action. Happens in the amount of days. And let me tell you, there's a lot of action. Just somehow (not feasibly) done in the span of a few hours. It reminds me of 24 where I'm always like "yeah right when do they eat or pee or rest after that bullet in their arm". It just takes away so much from the believability and buy in factor.
I honestly don't know if I even care to read the next book.
The main character Em is decently developed yet a bit confusing. She's been alone for the last 10 years and at 19 she's extremely immature (which might be expected) but she knows things that are explained away because she was either told when she was 9 (who remembers that?!) or she read them in romance novels or survival books... yeah. No.
But ok I can let that slide.
I sill see two bigger blaring problems. The first is that though the characters are developed decently, the relationships are not. People become attached to each other, bffs for life, in the matter of hours. Every time I turned around Em was confessing love for some friend or other and I just couldn't see why or what she liked about them at all. Ok sure she's been deprived of human relationships for ten years so maybe she's desperate. But it's not just her. Her love interests and her new friends absolutely adore her in the time it takes to walk from one place to the next. I kept finding myself stopping and wondering if I missed something and flipping back to see how we got from point A to point B.
Which leads me to the next flaw. The author skips around soooo much. It's like she missed 4th grade writing where you learn smooth transitions. She jumps from here to there- quite literally- all the time. Again Em spends like zero time in one place and the whole book takes place in the span of a few weeks. The action. Happens in the amount of days. And let me tell you, there's a lot of action. Just somehow (not feasibly) done in the span of a few hours. It reminds me of 24 where I'm always like "yeah right when do they eat or pee or rest after that bullet in their arm". It just takes away so much from the believability and buy in factor.
I honestly don't know if I even care to read the next book.
stephreadsal0t's review
1.0
Weirdly slut shaming and rapey. The rules of the world are constantly broken with no explanation.
icygrl7's review against another edition
3.0
This book was just alright for me. It was slow to start but once it go going it was pretty good. There were parts I didn't like, that i liked, and that I loved. I didn't used to read dystopian books but I have fallen in love with the genre. This isn't the worst one I have read but it isn't the best one I have read either. I am going to read the last two books in the trilogy because it captured just enough of my attention for me to care about the outcome of the story. I am hoping that the others will get better.
hayleysf's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
0.25
stacylmoll's review
5.0
If the world goes to hell, I want Em by my side! Her bow and arrow skills rivals Katness', her survival abilities are as good as Kyra's from Partials. This book has it all. Not sure how I missed this one in all my book searching, all three are out. I'm already working on book two.