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A review by literary_snowflakes
Reactive by Becky Moynihan
3.0
Decent story…great for younger teens
Okay, so I realize that as someone in their 30s that read dystopian YA years and years ago when it was becoming popular, my opinion is going to be a little skewed. I read so many dystopian YA novels that many of them were starting to feel a bit repetitive and took a very long break from them. Now I’m dipping my toes back in and I feel like this book was missing something.
The main female character Lune is one that I couldn’t really relate to. I was rooting for her (because who doesn’t want the protagonist to win) but I feel like there was almost too much happening with her. Too many injuries to where she shouldn’t even be alive, much less moving, but yet her determination just kind of made up for it? Brendan (Bren) also kinda just pissed me off because he was cryptic, always confident in his abilities, and seemed to really not be bad at anything.
There are many parallels that one could make between this book and The Hunger Games (THG) This one did feel more like a romance/love story with the game of survival as a secondary focus whereas THG was heavy on the survival with the romance/love story being secondary.
The fact that this novel is called Reactive is very descriptive of how Lune behaves. She reacts based on instinct and impulsivity. Her emotions constantly fluctuate and her internal ramblings are mostly comprised of a jumbled mess (which aptly describes me as a teenager and sometimes present day me as well).
The world and how it operates in this book kept me confused the entire time. Maybe I was trying to read too fast, maybe it just didn’t make sense in my head, but I’m hoping that the next book will shine some light on a few things. Line has been isolated in this city for several years and her only focus was to train to complete the trials and earn her freedom. She has no concept on life outside of the city and neither does the reader. It is a bit slow to start but I’d say it was about 100 pages in that I really started getting invested into the story.
This book focuses more on Lune and Bren’s relationship more so than I expected. Though this is YA, I definitely feel it’s more geared toward and younger teen age group. There’s no foul language or anything more romantic than kissing, but there is a great deal of violence described as well as different triggers that lead to descriptions of panic that may affect some readers. If you read The Hunger Games or Divergent, you’ll be okay with this book.
Okay, so I realize that as someone in their 30s that read dystopian YA years and years ago when it was becoming popular, my opinion is going to be a little skewed. I read so many dystopian YA novels that many of them were starting to feel a bit repetitive and took a very long break from them. Now I’m dipping my toes back in and I feel like this book was missing something.
The main female character Lune is one that I couldn’t really relate to. I was rooting for her (because who doesn’t want the protagonist to win) but I feel like there was almost too much happening with her. Too many injuries to where she shouldn’t even be alive, much less moving, but yet her determination just kind of made up for it? Brendan (Bren) also kinda just pissed me off because he was cryptic, always confident in his abilities, and seemed to really not be bad at anything.
There are many parallels that one could make between this book and The Hunger Games (THG) This one did feel more like a romance/love story with the game of survival as a secondary focus whereas THG was heavy on the survival with the romance/love story being secondary.
The fact that this novel is called Reactive is very descriptive of how Lune behaves. She reacts based on instinct and impulsivity. Her emotions constantly fluctuate and her internal ramblings are mostly comprised of a jumbled mess (which aptly describes me as a teenager and sometimes present day me as well).
The world and how it operates in this book kept me confused the entire time. Maybe I was trying to read too fast, maybe it just didn’t make sense in my head, but I’m hoping that the next book will shine some light on a few things. Line has been isolated in this city for several years and her only focus was to train to complete the trials and earn her freedom. She has no concept on life outside of the city and neither does the reader. It is a bit slow to start but I’d say it was about 100 pages in that I really started getting invested into the story.
This book focuses more on Lune and Bren’s relationship more so than I expected. Though this is YA, I definitely feel it’s more geared toward and younger teen age group. There’s no foul language or anything more romantic than kissing, but there is a great deal of violence described as well as different triggers that lead to descriptions of panic that may affect some readers. If you read The Hunger Games or Divergent, you’ll be okay with this book.