Level 2 (The Memory Chronicles #1)

Just to clear up the confusion, Level 2 and The Memory After are the same book.

Now onto the review.
This was possibly the most confusing, yet most interesting book I've ever read. I started reading it today, and I just couldn't put it down.
The Characters: I really don't know how I feel about the characters. The main character was interesting, but I won't lie and say I connected with her. Felicia is clearly in love with her boyfriend, so I don't know what the purpose of the other love interest was. Felicia's parents were not my favorite. Her mom seemed like the typical, "I'm not going to really write this character so she's going to be absent all of the time" adult figure.
The plot was really confusing at times. Since the book is kind of futuristic and it deals with the afterlife, there's obviously going to have to be a lot of explaining for some parts. But I read a couple of things and was literally thinking "wait, what?" But, the author was very good at writing those questions that make the reader question if everything they've read has been a lie. Which is good and bad. That kind of writing made the book suspenseful and more thrill-like.
Would I recommend it? Depends. The book was good, and I don't feel like I've wasted my time, but it was definitely...different.

Level 2 has an awesome idea (as well as a brilliant, bad-ass cover). It's no secret that the afterlife genre is getting a little bit used, but the great thing about this genre is that all the book are so different, because it's not exactly a fixed idea.

First, I'm going to explain about this setup. There are a number of places called hives, each full of drones, which are dead people. In the hive that Felicia's in, all the drones are females, around her age, and died early 21st century. Pretty much all these drones do all day is relive their memories, and they can even rent other people's memories if they feel like it.

Most of Felicia's character is developed through her reliving her memories. And I just felt like some of those flashbacks were just there to fill up some page space. Most of them, like the development of Julian's character and that whole drama with Autumn, worked pretty well with the plot, while others, like many of Felicia's memories with Neil, didn't add much to the plot in terms of stopping the Morati.

Actually, the whole thing with Neil didn't really work for me at all. Let's just get this straight. While the synopsis hints at a love triangle, there is no love triangle in this story at all. Felicia was pretty decisive on who she wanted to be with (i.e. Neil). And with basically nothing at all to connect Neil's flashbacks with the actual plot, the whole romance between Felicia and Neil bordered between endearingly sweet and too-good-to-be-true. To tell the truth, I didn't really like either of them because while they both seemed to love Felicia, Neil was a totally, completely perfect guy scenario and he didn't really connect with any of the real plot, and Julian, while hot and quite charming, other times he was just a lying jerk.

The ending was also a little too abrupt. I was totally engaged and BAM! I'm sorry, I think I got a bump on my head I hit that back cover so hard.

I hope in the next book that we will get to learn more about Level 2 and Level 3. I would also like Felicia to step up to the plate a bit more. This is a kind of contemporary-meets-science-fiction book. I hope we get more of the science fiction part in the next book!!