While reading this you can really tell (or I did anyway) that Patrick Ness's writing and story-telling was really high quality, which was by far the best thing it had going for it and the definitive highlight of the book as a whole. The Knife of Never Letting Go kept me on my toes constantly, had very high stakes and was so unpredictable that I couldn't even predict one thing that ended up occurring, even with the subtle foreshadowing hinting at those inevitable events. To add onto that, the depth of the characters and world was so well done and such a stand out. In the beginning, Todd and Viola felt like complete strangers in a world which was completely new and unrecognisable. In the end, Todd and Viola felt like characters I knew to their cores in a world which I understood and had piles of knowledge on. Patrick Ness's ability to do this with complete coherence and have so many other things going on alongside this blew me away. I'm now attached to these characters and world (even if it's a horrific world) profusely and am eager to continue indulging myself in the next two books.

Now yes I'm supposing you're wondering why not a five star. The reason is solely because I wasn't 100% engaged with the book and had other things going through my mind which tempered my enjoyability. This was in no way this book's fault and just my own personal mind not being able to focus on what I was reading for 10 minutes straight, but nevertheless I'm not going to give a book five stars if I thought the book in it of itself was great but my personal experience with it wasn't great. It was good! Not great. AND THAT'S MY FAULT SO TO ANY OTHER PERSON I WOULD HIGHLY SUGGEST TRYING THIS OUT!!!