daynight, a young adult dystopian novel by Megan Thomason, was a fairly fun read despite some issues. It could have used more polish, but still managed to tell an interesting story that kept my attention.
THE BLURB:
Meet The Second Chance Institute (SCI): Earth’s benevolent non-profit by day, Thera’s totalitarian regime by night. Their motto: Because Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Life(TM). Reality: the SCI subjects Second Chancers to strict controls and politically motivated science experiments like Cleaving—forced lifetime union between two people who have sex. Punishment for disobeying SCI edicts? Immediate Exile or death.
Meet Kira Donovan. Fiercely loyal, overly optimistic, and ensnared by the promise of a full-ride college scholarship, Kira signs the SCI Recruit contract to escape memories of a tragedy that left her boyfriend and friends dead.
Meet Blake Sundry. Bitter about being raised in Exile and his mother’s death, Blake’s been trained to infiltrate and destroy the SCI. Current barrier to success? His Recruit partner—Miss Goody Two Shoes Kira Donovan.
Meet Ethan Darcton. Born with a defective heart and resulting inferiority complex, Ethan’s forced to do his SCI elite family’s bidding. Cleave-worthy Kira Donovan catches his eye, but the presiding powers give defect-free Blake Sundry first dibs.
Full of competing agendas, romantic entanglements, humor, twists and turns...
MY THOUGHTS:
I did like this book, although as I said there were a few things that rubbed me the wrong way.
I thought the book was far too long for its genre. The writing itself got long-winded and times, and could have used some cutting and tightening.
There were a couple of instances when the author told where she should have showed. Specifically, there were times when something huge and terrible happened, but the characters lacked any evidence of emotional response. Later they would reflect on how awful they felt, but we never saw that. This didn't happened often, however.
For me, the aspect about the book I found the most intriguing wasn't the competing agendas and political plots, but the atmosphere created by throwing a bunch of 18-or-so-year-olds together in this strictly dictated society and expecting them to form relationships (in fact, to "cleave", heh heh) with one another to suit the regime's purposes. This resulted in a lot of romantic tension and emotional angst, as well as a dash of hubba hubba. And then Kira is expected to choose between the guy she fantasizes about, and the one she never thought she would want until they were thrown together in collaboration against the scheming leaders of Thera.
This part of daynight did get a little silly at points, when everyone has only cleaving on the mind all the time, and then hitting on mass forced-pregnancies of genetic siblings. And even though the romantic tension was what I found the most fun, even I got frustrated by the love triangle by the end.
daynight wasn't perfect, but it was mostly fun, and it's the first book in a series so there's more of the story to tell. I do plan on picking up book two, arbitrate, someday.
MY RATING:
3 booksies
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