The Darkest Minds- Review

     

by Alexandra Bracken 

Series: Darkest Minds #1
Genre: Dystopian 
Published - December 2012 
Hardcover (488 pgs) 

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government "rehabilitation camp." She might have survived the mysterious disease that's killed most of America's children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.

Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she's on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her-East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can't risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.

When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living. (From Goodreads) 

There is a ton of hype around this book and I have been very interested to read it. I decided to pick this up this month because of #WednesdayYA which is a read-along that Misty and Liz host during the month. For March they picked this and I'm glad they did.

Overall I really did like this book. I wish I had read this book before I heard all the hype because so often that damages my relationship with a book. I had really high expectations for this dystopian because of all the amazing things I heard about it. Overall it was good, but it didn't blow me away and I had some problems with it. Namely I had some issues with world building/believability. There were a lot of really good moments in this book as well and I'm interested to see what happens in book two, Never Fade.

The characters are fantastic in this series opener. I really liked all the main characters in this book. Liam, Chubs, Zu and Ruby are excellent. Their banter had me laughing outloud at points. I enjoyed their relationship with each other and they were great as individuals too. They were a fun group of characters to read and this is a very character driven story. Obviously this isn't a walk in the park though, the four of them get into some serious situations where my heart was pounding. They are what really made me kept picking up this book and to keep reading. Ruby's character growth alone in this book is really engaging. Without such engaging characters, I don't think think this would have won me over.

I had some problems with world building and really losing myself to the world. Because this is a future version of our society, it was really easy to jump into how the basics of the world work. However, I had a lot of questions about how things deteriorated into the state they are in the book and the abilities the kids had. There didn't seem to be a lot of answers which was frustrating, but hopefully there will be more in the next book. I wanted to throw myself into this book and love it, but the introduction to the situation was vague so it was a little difficult.

We shall see where the next book takes us. I want to get back to this series soon and I'm anxiously waiting to see what book three will be called. If you didn't know the titles of the books will create a sentence so I'm excited to see what they come up with.

Rating 4/5