YA – Page 11 – Lyndsey Hall

Review: Perfect by Cecelia Ahern

Review Perfect Cecelia Ahern Lyndsey's Book Blog

Hi guys! I have news 🙂 On Wednesday 11th April my beautiful baby boy finally arrived! He’s officially eight weeks old today. I can’t believe I’m the mum of a two month old baby… While I bury my head in the sand and try to ignore the fact I’m now frighteningly grown up and completely responsible for another human life, here’s a little book review for your reading pleasure.

The first book in this duology, Flawed, was the first book I ever reviewed on this blog! You can check out my review here, if you haven’t read book one and don’t want any spoilers then I wouldn’t recommend reading on…

TL;DR Celestine is in hiding after escaping the clutches of Judge Crevan and his Whistleblowers. Holed up in a Flawed safe-house with a group of fellow branded outcasts, she’s a sitting duck when the Whistleblowers eventually turn up to raid the facility. Forced to go on the run again, she decides to hunt down the one person who may be able to help her overturn her Flawed sentence, but will she find the elusive footage and expose Judge Crevan for the monster he really is?

So, we left Celestine at the end of Flawed leaving her parents’ home and going on the run from Judge Crevan and his Whistleblowers, and we meet her again at the beginning of Perfect hiding out on her granddad’s farm. If you remember, Granddad is a Flawed sympathiser who speaks out against Crevan and his court, and helps Celestine when she first goes into hiding in book one. He’s an absolute legend with zero filter, like many granddads, which unfortunately means he’s already on the court’s radar, so it’s not long before the Whistleblowers turn up to raid his property in search of Celestine.

Barely escaping a pretty horrifying and fiery death, our girl Celestine is forced to run again, and with the help of some old friends, winds up at a facility where Flawed are hidden and employed in secret. She’s reunited with Carrick, but the peace doesn’t last long as Whistleblowers soon arrive, having been tipped off to Celestine’s location by someone she considered a friend. Worse, a familiar face is among the soldiers sent to escort her to Highland Castle.

With nowhere left to run, Celestine is forced to seek out the one person who might be able to help her overturn her Flawed sentence, if only she can find the lost footage of her sixth brand. If she discovers the tape in time, she’ll have a decision to make that could impact on the entire country – use the footage to blackmail Judge Crevan and have her sentence overturned, or release the tape and expose Crevan for the monster he is, in the hopes this revelation brings about the demise of the Guild itself. Will she save herself, or sacrifice her only leverage in order to free her fellow Flawed from their own sentences?

You’ll have to read it to find out! 😉

Perfect is a gripping novel that provides a satisfying conclusion to the Flawed series, answering some of the questions we’re left with after book one and posing several more about ethics, morality and humanity. There are parallels with the Nazi regime in this book that highlight the ease with which people can be turned against a subgroup of society, given enough indoctrination.

The Flawed are stripped of all life’s luxuries, forced to eat a bland diet, given a strict curfew, banned from gathering in groups of three or more, and forbidden from enjoying many of what we would consider basic human rights.

The rest of society are threatened with being labelled Flawed themselves if they so much as help a Flawed person, suggesting that being Flawed is practically contagious. Sympathising with the Flawed’s plight is tantamount to openly criticising the Guild, another surefire way to wind up branded Flawed yourself, so people avoid their Flawed neighbours, treat them as lesser, something to be pitied and feared, which makes the Guild’s job of alienating the Flawed and controlling the general public even easier.

It’s a terrifyingly credible series of events.

I gave Perfect 3.5 stars, the same star rating I gave Flawed, it’s a well written sequel and a satisfying conclusion, I enjoyed reading it, but it wasn’t completely unputdownable, and I would have loved to feel more gripped. A little more tension and threat would have made this a four star read.

If you love dystopian stories, you’ll definitely enjoy Flawed and Perfect, the premise is equally fascinating and quietly disturbing, and Ahern’s execution is perfectly tuned to the Young Adult genre, after dozens of incredibly successful adult novels.

Have you read the Flawed series? What were your thoughts, did you find the concept believable? Let me know in the comments.

Lyndsey

Review: One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

I read One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus on my holiday in Singapore in September and I literally flew through it, it was such a fun read.

TL;DR Five kids go into detention, but only four come out alive. They’ve all got secrets, but do any of them have a motive for murder? Simon’s plan to expose all their deepest, darkest truths on his popular gossip app could be the key…

A jock, a geek, a prom queen, a bad boy, and Simon the outcast are all thrown into detention for having phones in their bags. The weird thing is, they’re not their phones. That doesn’t seem to matter to the overzealous teacher though. When a crash in the school car park draws the teacher away from the room, leaving the kids alone, it’s not long before Simon is dead, the cause a suspected allergic reaction.

One by one, the kids are questioned by the police and their darkest secrets start to come out, secrets so big they might push anyone to kill to keep them hidden. Any one of the four could be responsible, or could they just be the scapegoats for a killer who’s hiding in plain sight?

By the end of the book, no one is who they seemed at first glance, and they’ll never be the same again. Isolated and feared by their schoolmates, and demonised by the local media, Bronwyn, Addy, Nate and Cooper gradually form a tight-knit circle, but is it a case of keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Or are the four witnesses to Simon’s death the only ones who can solve the mystery before the crime is pinned on the wrong person?

This book is a fun, fast and gripping read with so many twists and turns it’ll keep you up at night turning page after page. Billed as a cross between The Breakfast Club and Pretty Little Liars, it brings together a band of misfits from every well-known high school clique and throws them into a compelling murder mystery plot for the modern age.

I had my suspicions about the climax from somewhere in the middle, but I certainly didn’t predict the whole reveal and was pleasantly surprised by some of the twists. The only reason this wasn’t a five star read is because a few of the secrets were pretty predictable and some of the drama was very high school, which is not a criticism as such, but knowing that I’m not exactly the target demographic for YA, despite it being my favourite, from a personal point of view some of the issues could have been easily resolved with a little communication. I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem for younger readers, so that’s a very personal feeling on the novel and definitely wouldn’t make me recommend this book any less, I still think it’s a brilliant read.

I gave One of Us is Lying four stars, it’s a great contemporary thriller with well-written, flawed and interesting characters and an explosive plot twist. Have you read it yet? If not, what are you waiting for? If yes, tell me in the comments what you thought! Who was your favourite character? Did you see the twist coming? (No spoilers please!).

Lyndsey

Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Raise your hand if you’re years behind the curve and have only just gotten to the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer? *Raises hand*

I buddy-read Cinder with one of my Goodreads groups back in July and I actually burned through it way quicker than I should have and skipped ahead of the rest of the group. Sorry guys! But it’s a really great read if you love fairy tale retellings with a twist. Sci-fi isn’t usually my first choice, but I enjoyed this fresh take on a much-loved classic.

TL;DR Cinder, a cyborg, lives in New Beijing and works on a market stall as a mechanic. One day, the prince drops by with an android he needs her to take a look at, but a plague breakout shuts down the market. Cinder’s evil step-mother sells her to a medical study which is testing the plague on cyborgs and looking for a cure. There she discovers the truth about herself and the moon-residing beings called Lunars…

Cinder is set in a futuristic, fantasy version of China, and the Moon is now home to a colony of humanoid creatures called Lunars who possess the ability to manipulate Earthans. A deadly plague has killed thousands of people, and a medical study has been set up to test potential cures on cyborgs – people who are part human, part robot.

“I’m sure I’ll feel much more grateful when I find a guy who thinks complex wiring in a girl is a turn-on.”

As a cyborg, Cinder is treated like a second class citizen, not least by her step-mother, Adri, who blames her for the death of her father years earlier. After an outbreak of plague at a nearby stall forces Cinder to flee the market, and her sweet but spoilt step-sister Peony falls ill, Adri sells Cinder to the medical study out of spite. Desperate to help save her sister’s life, Cinder goes willingly and works with the doctors to discover why she didn’t become infected, but was able to pass the disease on to Peony.

“Imagine there was a cure, but finding it would cost you everything. It would completely ruin your life. What would you do?”

In the meantime, Cinder keeps bumping into the handsome and charming Prince Kai, whose android needs fixing after crashing in possession of an important message. Unfortunately, she’s a little busy being a test subject and trying to hide the fact she’s a cyborg from him to actually fix the robot. That is, until the Lunar Queen decides to make a rare visit to Earth, and specifically to New Beijing, to talk potential marriage plans with the King.

“Prince Kai! Check my fan, I think I’m overheating.”

And, what would any Cinderella retelling be without a ball? Prince Kai convinces Cinder to join him at the ball thrown in honour of the Lunar delegation’s visit, but with no dress and an old, ill-fitting robot foot, how can she possibly accompany the most eligible bachelor in the whole of the Eastern Commonwealth to the biggest party in decades?

“She was a cyborg, and she would never go to a ball.”

As fairy tale retellings go, Cinder is an incredibly inventive and fresh take on an old classic. There are just enough familiar elements to keep it in line with the original, and plenty of new twists to make it a fun read for fairy tale fans (the robot foot instead of a glass slipper is a cool update!).

I gave Cinder 3.5 stars, because whilst I enjoyed it I wasn’t gripped like I hoped. Usually fairy tale retellings are my jam, but sci-fi isn’t, so I didn’t love this one as much as I wanted to. I still plan to carry on reading the rest of the series as that cliffhanger ending was a killer! And I’m hoping to enjoy each book more and more as I get accustomed to the sci-fi elements and get more invested in the characters.

Have you read the Lunar Chronicles? Did you instantly love them, or does the series get better with each book? I’m hoping to read Scarlet next year at some point, once my raging TBR starts to dwindle. Maybe I’ll love another protagonist better, I’m not sure what it was about Cinder that just didn’t click with me, so maybe me and Scarlet will get along better!

Lyndsey