watersapphire's review
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Mīlīgs zinātniskās fanatstikas gabals.
kiiouex's review
3.0
erm, it wasn't bad but I'm also... too old for this book. The core story happened, and was fine, but overall I've got the impression that the story was really... insubstantial. No B plots, no world outside of the very small locale, only a very small handful of sci-fi ideas, and yeah. It's fine. But very much YA.
rsarnelli's review against another edition
4.0
More like 3.5 stars. I didn't quite love this, but I definitely really enjoyed it. It's a very unique and thought-provoking take on sci-fi/dystopian, with robots, artificial intelligence, and complex characters and villains. The ending is open enough for a sequel at some point, which I'm definitely hoping for.
More of a review to come at some point.
More of a review to come at some point.
boyanna's review against another edition
im DNF-ing this at 33% not because it is bad, but because i'm not into robot lovin' and can't entirely relate to the story...
mxlibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
Actual rating 4.25
Oh yes, that most certainly needs a sequel.
Oh yes, that most certainly needs a sequel.
aly_bu's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this book! Well written. I really loved how Floreen wrote depression: understated yet real. Usually it's easy to sympathize with a character who has clear goals and a moral basis but faces external obstacles. We sympathize with Lee because of the exact opposite, and not in a groaning, "omg stop pitying yourself you whiny rich kid" way. He's real and gritty and easy to relate to and I loved him. I definitely saw that plot twist coming from about twenty miles away (as soon as we met Nico I was like, "ok, when is he gonna get cut so we see the bionic insides) but even then the story excelled on not leaning on that as a plot device. I will express frustrations because I hate being stuck in a character's mind who willfully avoids the truth (when we doubt Nico's intentions but Lee goes ahead and smooches him anyways) but I can excuse that. Pretty much everything else was breath-taking. An awesome first novel.
dessy331's review against another edition
3.0
I wasn't a huge fan of this.
I had mixed feelings about the characters. I didn't like Nico as a person, so adding the whole non-human aspect didn't really change anything. I didn't like some of the things he said and parts of his behaviour kinda bugged me, but I'll get to that in a sec. I liked Lee -he was sweet and socially awkward and heroic- except for the fact that he was such an idiot. I also liked his best friend Bex, she was cool and super clever. Lee's father was a shit dad but an interesting character, I thought.
I had a problem with the plausibility of certain things in this book. Like for one, what is the president of the united states doing giving a speech at a high school about terrorism? Wouldn't he be giving this speech to like, the entire country? And then there's Lee's bodyguard who opens fire, indoors, in a room full of kids and a teacher, shooting at a mechanical bird on the goddamn ceiling?? Because he's the worst bodyguard ever and not, apparently, a trained professional who works for the literal president. Then there's Lee just full-out scaling the walls of this school to get to Nico's room, because of course.
Speaking of Lee and the dumb choices he makes for love... Lee Fisher is the dumbest boy.... He's so dumb, I swear. He constantly makes outrageously bad decisions while I'm sitting there shaking my head. Like yes, you should totally sneak out for the 2nd night in a row with this strange boy your trusted friend just warned you about after having received a scary lecture from your creepy grandpa about staying safe! And yeah, totally leave your only source of protection against the robots behind you definitely won't need it tonight! No, you shouldn't tell your father about the robot whose working with a known terrorist the day before she's planned an attack and potentially save the lives of all your classmates! Sigh. Dumb YA novel teenage boy is dumb. When he got angry at Bex for talking bad about his new bf (which she did very understandingly and had v solid points) and he stormed off, I face palmed so hard. What a trope, having the mc get warned about a dangerous person, them getting pissed and refusing to listen, right before something bad happens. And dumb Lee fell for it, over and over again, because he's dumb.
I wasn't feeling the romance at all. To me, they didn't seem to understand each other or seem compatible at all? It felt like a really strong infatuation. I mean come on, the whole book spanned maybe two weeks, max, and they were already saying "I love you" and were willing to die for each other. Shakespearean, indeed. (Yay for more YA cliches!) Their first meeting was decently cute but it was all downhill from there. Strike one for them was Lee spying on Nico, in his bedroom(!!!), even though he hadn't even made himself look that suspicious yet. That was so unethical - and all just to see whether he was ~dating material~ since Lee is the president's kid and therefore presents a huge target - and it just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I also didn't like that Nico pushed him to admit that he was gay, and even laughed when he suggested that he might not actually be. Which, he could be bisexual, pansexual, queer, etc. Nico barely knows him at this point and yet assumes that he does, idk I found that to be quite arrogant of him. He didn't seem to have much sympathy for Lee's situation when he was pressuring him about coming out. Like he's the president's son, the amount of attention he'd get from being outed... And yet Nico acted like it was so simple and he should screw everyone and just do it, damn the consequences. The same know-it-all, unempathetic way he'd responded when Lee told him about his depression ("I think the word you're looking for is melancholy." Ugh.)
My favourite part about this book was the robots. I liked all of the little gadgets that Lee made (..before they went rogue and tried to kill everybody..) and the technology of this world. Gremlin is the cutest sidekick - the little story of why he always tugs on Lee's ear is so sweet. Oh, I loved himmm! I wish they'd explained how the "supernet" differs from our internet but they never did. Some more world-building would have been interesting to read about.
Overall, I liked how mental illness was portrayed in this book, but not how it was dealt with. Lee suffers with depression and suicidal thoughts and you get to see him dealing with that throughout the novel. The thing I didn't like was the idea that the cure for Lee's depression was a boy loving him. That's...an unhealthy idea to give to young people dealing with mental illness that might read this, the idea that if you meet the right boy he can fix all your problems and everything will magically be perfect. Whenever it came to Nico, Lee's depression magically went away and towards the end he told Nico that he didn't feel like he wanted to stop living anymore (as long as he had Nico in his life), it gave him purpose. He doesn't want to die because he wants to save Nico and be with him, not for any other reason. So unhealthy. It would have been much better if Lee had found purpose within himself (through becoming a hero and stopping the attack) and came around to seeing himself in a better light. By the end, he's still so painfully insecure, doesn't believe he's anything special, and that's really unfortunate because he's one of the better people in this story. A real hero. At the end I felt like he'd more or less found himself but it wasn't said outright - those earlier statements still stood so young readers were still left with that damaging idea. I really wish the author had chosen to take the story in a different direction. However, I did like that even in the middle of all that craziness, his illness was still present and he had to work through it instead of it just conveniently not being an issue then - so he could save the world uninterrupted by real life problems. Very realistic and an empowering moment for Lee's character.
I liked the plot twist with Stroud being gay and killing the person he loved to "become strong". I was unexpected and provided an interesting motivation for why his character chose to do what he did. I'm not sure how I feel about him committing suicide at the end (that's two gay characters attempting suicide in this book.. idk how I feel about that..) I liked learning more about all the characters back stories, including Dr. Singh, Lee's dad, Nico, Charlotte, etc. But I thought the ending left a lot of things unanswered and wasn't super satisfying. We still don't know whether Nico made it, or whether the terrorist organization was destroyed, or how Lee's dad handles him being gay, or what the fate of all the characters is. We don't know shit, basically. It just ended with Lee stopping the attack, Nico "dying", Stroud committing suicide, and Lee's dad finding out the truth about everything. Not much is resolved and it's very much an open ending.
A really "meh" read, in my opinion. There are a lot of high-rated reviews for this book so I expected much more from it but I wasn't overly impressed. Too much insta-love and poor decision making for my taste. 3 stars.
I had mixed feelings about the characters. I didn't like Nico as a person, so adding the whole non-human aspect didn't really change anything. I didn't like some of the things he said and parts of his behaviour kinda bugged me, but I'll get to that in a sec. I liked Lee -he was sweet and socially awkward and heroic- except for the fact that he was such an idiot. I also liked his best friend Bex, she was cool and super clever. Lee's father was a shit dad but an interesting character, I thought.
I had a problem with the plausibility of certain things in this book. Like for one, what is the president of the united states doing giving a speech at a high school about terrorism? Wouldn't he be giving this speech to like, the entire country? And then there's Lee's bodyguard who opens fire, indoors, in a room full of kids and a teacher, shooting at a mechanical bird on the goddamn ceiling?? Because he's the worst bodyguard ever and not, apparently, a trained professional who works for the literal president. Then there's Lee just full-out scaling the walls of this school to get to Nico's room, because of course.
Speaking of Lee and the dumb choices he makes for love... Lee Fisher is the dumbest boy.... He's so dumb, I swear. He constantly makes outrageously bad decisions while I'm sitting there shaking my head. Like yes, you should totally sneak out for the 2nd night in a row with this strange boy your trusted friend just warned you about after having received a scary lecture from your creepy grandpa about staying safe! And yeah, totally leave your only source of protection against the robots behind you definitely won't need it tonight! No, you shouldn't tell your father about the robot whose working with a known terrorist the day before she's planned an attack and potentially save the lives of all your classmates! Sigh. Dumb YA novel teenage boy is dumb. When he got angry at Bex for talking bad about his new bf (which she did very understandingly and had v solid points) and he stormed off, I face palmed so hard. What a trope, having the mc get warned about a dangerous person, them getting pissed and refusing to listen, right before something bad happens. And dumb Lee fell for it, over and over again, because he's dumb.
I wasn't feeling the romance at all. To me, they didn't seem to understand each other or seem compatible at all? It felt like a really strong infatuation. I mean come on, the whole book spanned maybe two weeks, max, and they were already saying "I love you" and were willing to die for each other. Shakespearean, indeed. (Yay for more YA cliches!) Their first meeting was decently cute but it was all downhill from there. Strike one for them was Lee spying on Nico, in his bedroom(!!!), even though he hadn't even made himself look that suspicious yet. That was so unethical - and all just to see whether he was ~dating material~ since Lee is the president's kid and therefore presents a huge target - and it just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I also didn't like that Nico pushed him to admit that he was gay, and even laughed when he suggested that he might not actually be. Which, he could be bisexual, pansexual, queer, etc. Nico barely knows him at this point and yet assumes that he does, idk I found that to be quite arrogant of him. He didn't seem to have much sympathy for Lee's situation when he was pressuring him about coming out. Like he's the president's son, the amount of attention he'd get from being outed... And yet Nico acted like it was so simple and he should screw everyone and just do it, damn the consequences. The same know-it-all, unempathetic way he'd responded when Lee told him about his depression ("I think the word you're looking for is melancholy." Ugh.)
My favourite part about this book was the robots. I liked all of the little gadgets that Lee made (..before they went rogue and tried to kill everybody..) and the technology of this world. Gremlin is the cutest sidekick - the little story of why he always tugs on Lee's ear is so sweet. Oh, I loved himmm! I wish they'd explained how the "supernet" differs from our internet but they never did. Some more world-building would have been interesting to read about.
Overall, I liked how mental illness was portrayed in this book, but not how it was dealt with. Lee suffers with depression and suicidal thoughts and you get to see him dealing with that throughout the novel. The thing I didn't like was the idea that the cure for Lee's depression was a boy loving him. That's...an unhealthy idea to give to young people dealing with mental illness that might read this, the idea that if you meet the right boy he can fix all your problems and everything will magically be perfect. Whenever it came to Nico, Lee's depression magically went away and towards the end he told Nico that he didn't feel like he wanted to stop living anymore (as long as he had Nico in his life), it gave him purpose. He doesn't want to die because he wants to save Nico and be with him, not for any other reason. So unhealthy. It would have been much better if Lee had found purpose within himself (through becoming a hero and stopping the attack) and came around to seeing himself in a better light. By the end, he's still so painfully insecure, doesn't believe he's anything special, and that's really unfortunate because he's one of the better people in this story. A real hero. At the end I felt like he'd more or less found himself but it wasn't said outright - those earlier statements still stood so young readers were still left with that damaging idea. I really wish the author had chosen to take the story in a different direction. However, I did like that even in the middle of all that craziness, his illness was still present and he had to work through it instead of it just conveniently not being an issue then - so he could save the world uninterrupted by real life problems. Very realistic and an empowering moment for Lee's character.
I liked the plot twist with Stroud being gay and killing the person he loved to "become strong". I was unexpected and provided an interesting motivation for why his character chose to do what he did. I'm not sure how I feel about him committing suicide at the end (that's two gay characters attempting suicide in this book.. idk how I feel about that..) I liked learning more about all the characters back stories, including Dr. Singh, Lee's dad, Nico, Charlotte, etc. But I thought the ending left a lot of things unanswered and wasn't super satisfying. We still don't know whether Nico made it, or whether the terrorist organization was destroyed, or how Lee's dad handles him being gay, or what the fate of all the characters is. We don't know shit, basically. It just ended with Lee stopping the attack, Nico "dying", Stroud committing suicide, and Lee's dad finding out the truth about everything. Not much is resolved and it's very much an open ending.
A really "meh" read, in my opinion. There are a lot of high-rated reviews for this book so I expected much more from it but I wasn't overly impressed. Too much insta-love and poor decision making for my taste. 3 stars.
acrosby8's review against another edition
4.0
I read a book kinda like this one once before and it left a bad taste in my mouth. So when I started this one I was hesitate but I wasn't disappointed. Lee is our main character and tries so hard to hide that he id gay as hell and shouldn't fight his feeling. The ending had me going broke neck speed into a cliff. I really hope and wish that this will have a second book.