Review Detail

First of all—the cover. I realize the cover has nothing to do with the actual book, but it’s a very nice cover, you must agree.
Aside from the cover, the story itself was good. It wasn’t too predictable, like so many YA books happen to be. I wouldn’t say that I was kept on my toes, but I didn’t guess what was going to happen the second I finished the first chapter. I liked that. If you know what’s going to happen, why even bother to read? So that was a big plus.

I liked the characters a lot as well. They were all charming and fun to read about. Adam is a swoon-worthy leading man, and Warner is a bad guy who I think has a bit more depth than your average villain (I’ll will look forward to reading more about him in the sequel). Juliette herself wasn’t my favorite character, as far as female progatonists go, but she wasn’t horrid or dull or stupid, and I liked being inside her head.

But the best thing about this was the writing. It was fantastic, absolutely amazing. It reminds me of Lauren DeStefano’s style, only I think Mafi’s goes beyond that and brings something more to the table. Every sentence was an image, every paragraph a metaphor, especially in the beginning. As the plot progressed, Mafi’s prose got a bit lighter on the imagery, just by necessity of keeping the action moving. But it still showed up.

One very intersting aspect of Mafi’s writing was the strikethrough text. I’ve never seen that in a book, and though at times it was distracting for me, I thought it was a lovely touch on the whole.

I could not find the locale used in the beginning—the insane asylum—to be believable. This sounds like a trivial detail, but in the long run I think it’s important. The asylum is where Mafi chose to open her book, and as far as world-building goes, I don’t think she did a good job here.

Mostly my issue my the asylum is with the “shower scene” described in chapter 3. I have a hard time believing that, even when the world is in chaos, a government institution like a hospital would function the way it was described. Opening all the prisoners’ cells at one time to let them find their way through a pitch-black maze of hallways to the showers? Not even realistic. Who in their right mind, if they wanted to keep control, would let a bunch of “disturbed” kids roam around a dark building with no idea where they are or what exactly it is they’re looking for? This sounds like a romantic plot device to get our two love interests alone together in the dark. Unimpressive.

However, my real issue with this book was Juliette’s character. Self-loathing does not make for a good plot. I can only put up with so much “woe-is-me-I-killed-a-person” and “I’m-so-isolated-from-everything” and “my-parents-hated-me.” It gets old. And it’s hard to have a strong female lead who thinks she’s worthless and should just die to save other people. The only thing that made Juliette’s character palatable was the fact that she snapped out of her woebegone self-loathing. Mind you, it happened in the second-to-last chapter. But it happened, so I forgive her.

This was a fantastic read! It’s only my second YA dystopian novel, but if there are others out there like this one, I see the appeal. Mafi’s brilliant writing was the big seller here, but in most respects it was a very good debut.