I started doing ‘lazy Saturday reviews’ as a way of getting reviews done in just 30 mins, and they proved to be quite popular. They are quick and snappy, and concentrate less on the plot (or content) and writing and more on my overall feelings about said book. They generally end up being a bit of a rant. My fave!
Author: Katharine McGee
Series: The Thousandth Floor #1
Format: Digital ARC, 448 pages
Publication Details: August 30th 2016 by HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks
Genre(s): YA; Sci-FiDisclosure? Yep! I received a free copy in exchange for an HONEST review.
New York City as you’ve never seen it before. A thousand-story tower stretching into the sky. A glittering vision of the future, where anything is possible—if you want it enough.
Welcome to Manhattan, 2118.
A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. But people never change: everyone here wants something…and everyone has something to lose.
Leda Cole’s flawless exterior belies a secret addiction—to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched.
Eris Dodd-Radson’s beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart.
Rylin Myers’s job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world—and a romance—she never imagined…but will her new life cost Rylin her old one?
Watt Bakradi is a tech genius with a secret: he knows everything about everyone. But when he’s hired to spy by an upper-floor girl, he finds himself caught up in a complicated web of lies.
And living above everyone else on the thousandth floor is Avery Fuller, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all—yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have.
Debut author Katharine McGee has created a breathtakingly original series filled with high-tech luxury and futuristic glamour, where the impossible feels just within reach. But in this world, the higher you go, the farther there is to fall….
Review
This book left me undecided. On one hand I enjoyed it and couldn’t stop reading, but on the other it drove me mad and made me want to throw it out of the window.
I shouldn’t be surprised because I’m not a huge fan of multiple narration and boy was this multiple. Two different narrative voices I can deal with. Maybe even three. But six, really!? Ugh!
The main protagonist is Avery, and hers is the first voice we hear. I was hooked on Avery’s story which was both a blessing and a curse because when her chapter ended I had to go through three or four other character’s stories and they just didn’t grab me as much. That was successful in that it kept me reading but, unsuccessful because it dampened my enjoyment of reading it and I found myself skimming through most of the book.
It’s not a bad novel, don’t get me wrong. The world McGee has built here is very impressive, and I loved the idea of this thousand floor tower being their whole world. There are some flashes of really great Sci-Fi ideologies here too, and similar to Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, it was a worrying vision of the future.
