Wow, that was quite the ride. I’ll be honest, I went into this book with no expectations since I’d never heard of the book or author until an author event and just bought the book out of curiosity.

I’m happy I did because it wasn’t a waste of $10.

What’s The Culling about, you might ask. It’s plain and simple, really: The Hunger Games: The Gay Edition (No sarcasm or ship jokes intended)

I, even though The Culling’s general concept was very Hunger Game-ish, I found that it was also very different. For example, Lucky is a lot like Laia from An Ember in the Ashes and how she was pretty weak (in general) thought out the book mostly because of her fear and got stronger as story (books) progressed. Lucky came off like that. And I loved that. I loved that he wasn’t automatically strong and fearless in the face of danger and that he was human and could cry and was scared for his brother and for himself and for others.

I like how Lucky is constantly worrying about his Incentives. Actually, none of the Incentives are ever forgotten which I really like. They are constantly talked and/or worried.

I also loved the writing and word choice.

As for the romance...I thought it needed a bit more work to convince me it was the “I love you” kind. I think the kiss came too late into the book—unless I missed an earlier kiss than that kinda final moment one. I also feel like that kiss needed more description. More feeling. I understand the hand holding and all is super cute and it hints towards how they feel about each other but, people have lips too.

This is probably my reason for the drop in Star other than I thought there were things that were a little too convenient at times, especially for Digery and Lucky, towards the beginning of the book.

Other than that though, I loved the action-packed adventure and can’t wait until the second book arrives, so that I can continue reading on.