Howdy YAL!

I'd actually give it 2.5 stars if I could. Ambivalent. That's how I felt throughout most of this book. It had it's good points and boy did it have it's bad points. The action sequences and world building were pretty decent. However, structurally it was difficult to read. I don't think the style was really that unique. Rather, I thought it was a bit gimmicky. Plus, I don't really understand why Mafi couldn't write out numbers. Is it that difficult of a thing to do? I also had problems with the character development. The two leads were not fleshed out. Juliette was very weak. She didn't do really anything to fight back throughout most of the book. And I was sort of bored beyond belief with everyone telling her how pretty she was. Seriously. Every single guy, save for one whose hormones haven't kicked in yet, mentions how hot she is. As for Adam, he just comes off as too perfect. That he was in love with Juliette since the third grade, in which they never really shared a real conversation with each other, but he enlisted in the evil despot army just to find and rescue her. It doesn't make really that much sense to me since he has a little brother he should've been watching over, but whatever. I just wish there was a little edge to him. The one character that was well defined was the villain, believe it or not. Best Feature: X-Men. I like all these little nods to X-Men in this book. But of course it's not X-Men. Though Juliette does remind me of Rogue. A very whiney version of RogueWorst Feature: Bad Grammar: Sigh. I feel conflicted a part of me wants to award this feature to Juliette, but in the end I decided to give it to the bad grammar that was deemed Mafi's unique style. Look, I took lots of creative writing classes in college and I'm well aware that there are several ways to write a book. But I have issues with varying stylistic approaches when they are just blatantly obvious and serve no purpose other than giving me a migrane. For example, I don't understand why Mafi didn't write out numbers. There was no reason for it. Neither for the repeated crossing out of lines. While it might seem like it's a unique feature that makes the writing catchy to read, it gets redundant. Also, I should point out the frequent use of metaphors was obnoxious. It seemed like every single sentence there was some sort of metaphor. Wait, you might be thinking, metaphors are a good thing. And they are, they really are. But to have them every other sentence, reminds me of the fourth grade where you had to write a story that included x amounts of adjectives or what not.To see the whole review which includes casting plus a special dystopia analysis click here: http://yalbookbriefs.blogspot.com/2012/03/trend-spotlights-into-land-of-dystopia.html