4 stars


I definitely think the second half of this book was the strong part. I was actually surprised how long I felt that it took for us to really start moving with the story. Once we finally started moving into the nitty gritty, I was like "Wow, this is really cool!" but up until then I was like, "Okay, this chick is interesting. But what's the REAL story?"

I think one reason I was kind of disappointed is simply because it was another book that I built up in my head before I read it. I was just so in love with the concept because I'm a language person (Spanish major and I've dabbled in Italian, German, and French) so I was thrilled to see a story where this girl can understand any language. Now that I'm reflecting back on it, I guess I was hoping she was going to use that more instead of obeying her parents and covering it up all the time. I really wished that should would have been a bit more exciting and took a few more risks, other than to stick her neck out to constantly protect her little sister (noble and all, but still). If we had seen a bit more of Brooklyn's character in Charlie and not have had them so polarized as far as personality goes, I think it would have spiced up the story and made me feel like there was a little something more to keep me on the edge of my seat. I think if I could change one thing about the first half of the book, it would be that - a more daring Charlie that uses her talent to really show it off to the reader and not just passively listen to people's conversation.

I guess part of me also feels that as far as dystopians go, I understand that all of them - to a certain extent - need to have an uprising against the authority, but too many of them are just blending together in my head. This had a lot of feel of the Matched series (I guess specifically Reached, which I stopped and will later come back to because I was not feeling it) and I couldn't help but make comparisons in my head while I was reading. I guess I'm starting to tire of the whole militant/community uprising aspect to save a society from tyranny (a la the Matched trilogy (Reached specifically), Divergent/Insurgent) versus a more personal quest to keep freedoms (The Giver, the Chemical Garden Trilogy, Delirium (although I guess Pandemonium kind of takes on a more "militant" feel...).

As far as the love connection goes, I was just kind of 'meh' about Charlie and Max. As much as it was a quick connection, I didn't feel like it was "insta-love"y, so that's good, but even still, I didn't quite make it there to really be like "YES make this relationship happen!" I think I never really quite made a connection with him so I never really made a connection with the relationship.

The second half of the book was really great and I love the direction it took towards the end, as well as a few twists here and there. Mostly, I feel like now everything's been established and we can really get into the meat of this story and book one was more like a light snack. I'm really interested to see what happens in book two now!