I want to start off by expressing that I requested this title as it should have been something I would really life, if not love. A YA dystopian (/speculative fiction) genre story with a focus on genetics and gene editing (an area I have some background degree study in). However unfortunately I really struggled with this story, and had assumed I wouldn’t ever finish it until I had a sudden determination to finish it off. And the fact I did ultimately return to the novel is one of the reasons I did not rate this even lower.
There was a lot of potential, but ultimately it fell down for me in that I didn’t really care for the main characters, which meant my foundations for investing in their story was not there and the majority of this story was focused in on the two leads. I struggled with the believability of their early relationship and the almost insta-love style infatuation. The start of the story felt really long, and I was honestly surprised to find out that this story was not a tome because the pacing seemed quite slow early on. However, it did start to pick up later – then the problem became that every time I felt I was starting to get a grip on the characters or a particularly plot point, we would have a time jump. Some of which did not seem to make sense in their time of the amount of time which passed.
In some cases, the time jumps worked, both Harry and Charlie each had one time period that I began to warm to the character or take interest in their particular plot at that time. Some of the background characters that were introduced were interesting, I enjoyed Steve and Mango when they came into the story. I really hated the character of Brad, and felt uncomfortable with some of the writing around Charlie in this portion of the book.
I think if there had been more of a focus on some of the later elements of the book (with maybe flashbacks to their younger years), I may have enjoyed the story more. I did also find some elements of this story strange for a Young Adult audience, there seemed a lot of violence, and the maturity of the characters later in the book I think may have played to a more mature audience. This story has made me curious to try something else by the author at a later time, as I feel that is may just be this particular story that I ultimately did not like. Potentially a different story by the author may work better for me.
There was a lot of potential, but ultimately it fell down for me in that I didn’t really care for the main characters, which meant my foundations for investing in their story was not there and the majority of this story was focused in on the two leads. I struggled with the believability of their early relationship and the almost insta-love style infatuation. The start of the story felt really long, and I was honestly surprised to find out that this story was not a tome because the pacing seemed quite slow early on. However, it did start to pick up later – then the problem became that every time I felt I was starting to get a grip on the characters or a particularly plot point, we would have a time jump. Some of which did not seem to make sense in their time of the amount of time which passed.
In some cases, the time jumps worked, both Harry and Charlie each had one time period that I began to warm to the character or take interest in their particular plot at that time. Some of the background characters that were introduced were interesting, I enjoyed Steve and Mango when they came into the story. I really hated the character of Brad, and felt uncomfortable with some of the writing around Charlie in this portion of the book.
I think if there had been more of a focus on some of the later elements of the book (with maybe flashbacks to their younger years), I may have enjoyed the story more. I did also find some elements of this story strange for a Young Adult audience, there seemed a lot of violence, and the maturity of the characters later in the book I think may have played to a more mature audience. This story has made me curious to try something else by the author at a later time, as I feel that is may just be this particular story that I ultimately did not like. Potentially a different story by the author may work better for me.