abinthebooks's reviews
978 reviews

Read this in 4th grade and cried

*3.5


I think a lot of people believe that 3 stars is a bad rating, but I don't. I think to me, it means the book was good while I read it, but it wasn't memorable. And that's really what this book is to me.


I enjoyed it. It probably would have been a 4 star but the last 100 pages were a but iffy for me.


I think one of my big issues with this was the more telling than showing. And when I tell you there was a lot of showing, I mean A LOT of showing. It was almost like I was reading a movie, because our main character Isabel was telling us what happened with her and Sasha. It felt like a movie, almost like a montage.


The relationship between Sasha and Isabel was pretty mature, and they fought and they grew from it and they worked out their issues. Isabel and Sasha both matured as characters so I enjoyed that.


I enjoyed the characters, the plot, and everything else, I just thought it was a fine book. Not something I'd reread, but it was fun while I reread it.

Totally forgot this was required reading for my 5th grade English class! Didn’t love it when I read it, but I was probably just to young to appreciate it. Should probably go back and reread it soon!

This book was really unique and interesting. The world was really cool, and it reminded me a lot of the ruthless world of the Exploration Age in history. The problem's I had varied from weak characters, weird small plot holes, and the romance.


The side characters in here had little page personality, and it felt like some characters came into the plot, only for convenience, or villainy. I finished the book 20 minutes ago, and I don't remember the male side characters names. You know why? Because we didn't hardly see them at all.


There were also really weird plot holes in here too. It stated (at least I'm 90% sure) that Fable was 14 when she was dropped off on the small island, but in the flashbacks she acted like a small child. She also always called herself a "little girl", or "I'm not that same little girl anymore". You know, basically what people say when they're being dramatic about the past. It felt weird, and well, what it was. A plot hole. There was also this weird plot hole with Fable's dad. Not going to go to much into that, because ✨spoilers✨, but it was such an odd plot hole to miss.


And the romance, I don't think I like it. The whole relationships that Fable formed in fact, I didn't really like. The people on the Marigold hated Fable from the moment she set her feet on the ship. Then it was like a switch was flipped and POOF everyone likes her now. This was the problem, really with West (the love interest). He is kind of a douche if I'm putting it lightly. And the romance felt really forced between them, I didn't like it. In other words, Fable had 0 chemistry with any of these characters, and her West had negative chemistry. They just didn’t fit together. And maybe they could have, but we didn’t see them together enough for me to root for them. We didn’t see the development in their relationship, so I didn’t really feel anything towards it except repulse.


But the ending, the ending was the most interesting part of this book. See, the ending intrigued me, and I'm definitely going to pick up the sequel. Was pretty disappointed by this book though, especially since everyone has been raving about it for the last few months here.

I mean, ehh. That’s really all I have to say. I was just cringing a lot during this, and a lot of my thought process was “why did you do that?” Or “why did you say that?”.


Griffin was low key creepy, and Luca and Griffin’s relationship was a bit unhealthy. The smut was ok at best, and relationship between Griffin and Luca was borderline, instalove. Also, why did they photoshop a pen into the guys hand on the cover wtf?

Read and watched the movie in 3rd grade. Never continued on

Required reading for my 7th grade English class. I absolutely despised this book

Well, I guess I am the unpopular opinion here because, I didn't enjoy this, at all. My question is, "Why is this book hyped?" I know I'm the big outlier here, because this his a 4.50 on Goodreads alone, and my irl friend's absolutely love this book. I'm so confused! I obviously didn't get it, what was the point of the hype in here.


There isn't anything amazing about this book for me to consider it one of the best books of the 2010s decade (which I believe this was on last year). The writing in here is, so bad. Neal Shusterman is an author who tells us instead of shows us, and keeps making the dumbest and weirdest time jumps, and he switches the characters perspectives so frequently that its maddening.


I mean I was reading one paragraph in Citra's perspective, and it was like even though, they weren't?! It was so dumb. And then we jump to two weeks later in Rowan's POV and I was just sitting here like: Umm ok I guess that happened.


It was like Neal Shusterman can't even complete of thought of his character without time jumping or switching to the other characters POV and it just sucked away so much enjoyment for me from the book. I was disengaged and this is one of the reasons I didn't like the MCs.


Speaking of not liking the MCs, yeah I really didn't like neither Citra nor Rowan. Why? Well the reason I listed above, but also because these characters had ZERO personalities. We get the bare bones before they both become apprentices: Rowan is shy, Rowan is "the lettuce", Rowan doesn't like attention, Rowan's family doesn't care about him". whilst Citra was the complete opposite, Citra was a bit self conceited and loved attention, Citra is popular, Citra's family loved her,...and that's it. That's absolutely it. I didn't care because these characters are like bread. And not the grainy kind, they're wheat bread. The bread everyone thinks sucks, which is exactly what I think of these characters. THEY SUCK


These characters also have NO chemistry. You expect me to believe, after seeing Citra and Rowan interact about 10 times, with no past history between them, that they like each other? I mean jeez we haven't even seen these characters personalities (spoiler: they don't have them anyways), and Rowan is all like, Citra is so bold and witty. You know what, no. No these characters have chemistry because they are both as dry as the Sahara Desert, and I wouldn't want to subject someone to dating Rowan or Citra.


Also, what the fuck is the Thunderhead? It was mentioned what it was ONCE (and I obviously forgot what it meant) and then it just keeps referencing it. I'm so confused what it is?! Is it the government, is it the world, is a bloody cloud?!. This world makes absolutely no sense. This system is so confusing, and yes I love sci-fi, this is dystopian (which is a subgenre of sci-fi). However, I don't like sci-fi where we are just aupposed to be believe something and go on about our days. This is one of those sci-fi's. The system and world building made ZERO, NONE, NADA sense.


Overall, I am just baffled by the amount of hype this book gets?! What was the point was what I kept asking myself. This was just really bad and I most likely won't be reading anything from Neal Shusterman again.