Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishers and Delacorte Press for access to an early release copy.

An epidemic of sadness rocks teenagers through a national crisis- but doesn’t it always. The story feels like a familiar problem but tackles something new. It actually wants to come up with a solution to the problem. 

Seb gets the opportunity of a lifetime when he gets invited to the HappyHead retreat designed to solve the national crises. But again, we get invited to a retreat where they confiscate your phone and a chip is inserted? How does this not raise any red flags? It was hard to follow the progress of the story. Like this is a retreat, that people had to qualify for - but then there are some that don’t seem to want to be there. So there is a concept but not so much a set up or follow through on it. Overall, a story that feels like a science experiment on people.

 

Unfortunately it felt like a lot of telling and not showing, so I couldn’t really get into it. So much of the story felt very left out- like nothing was developed at all regarding the national crisis of an epidemic of unhappiness. Which is disappointing! Cause it was such a good idea. Be prepared as the ending isn’t a conclusion but a set up for book 2.