#TheWriteReads #BlogTour Review: The Unajdusteds by Marisa Noelle

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

An exciting first installment to an undoubtedly interesting trilogy!

Thank you so much to The Write Reads and Marisa Noelle for allowing me to be part of this experience and also providing me with a complimentary digital copy!

Purchase this book (affiliate link): Amazon

Review

Book CWs

For a list of warnings, tropes, and representation for this book, check out its page on BookTriggerWarnings.com.

Premise (from Goodreads)

Sixteen-year-old Silver Melody lives in a world where 80% of the population has modified their DNA. Known as the altereds, those people now possess enhancements like wings, tails, and increased strength or intelligence. Although Silver’s parents created the nanite pill used to deliver these genetic modifications, Silver is proud of her unadjusted state.

However, when the president declares all unadjusteds must take a nanite, Silver has no choice but to flee the city with her father and some friends to prevent the extinction of the unadjusteds.

With Silver’s mother in prison for treason, Silver’s father is the unadjusteds’ only hope at finding a cure. But time is running out as Silver’s father is captured by the president’s almost immortal army. Vicious hellhounds are on Silver’s trail, and her only chance to recover her father involves teaming up with a new group of unlikely friends before all humanity is lost.

Review (No Spoilers)

I literally just finished reading this book so I have a lot of fresh thoughts flying around in my brain. Please forgive me if this review is a tad incoherent.

As someone who recently started toying with the idea that maybe YA Dystopia is my favorite genre, this book really succeeded in deepening this thought. While the book is pretty formulaic in terms of what a standard dystopia plot involves–oppression, a breaking point, a rising rebellion–there were still a couple of curveballs thrown in there that shocked me in a really good way. I actually thought I had a good idea about where this book was heading but I did not expect that ending at all. I basically have no idea what the next book is going to involve which is only making me more anxious to read it.

Something that I think this novel really excelled at was grabbing my attention from the very first chapter. A lot of novels (especially SFF novels) will take a few chapters to establish a background story and as a result the action might only begin around 50% into the book. The Unadjusted on the other hand throws you into the action almost immediately and I found that very refreshing.

There were a few instances in the book where I got confused by the pacing, but never enough to make me lose interest in what was happening overall. I think the biggest example of this was in this kind of love triangle plot that never really got established.

I’m going to get into mild spoiler territory here you feel free to skip this next section.

If you know me then you probably know that I absolutely despise love triangles, so when I noticed that it didn’t seem to be developing in this book I was pretty satisfied. I continued to be happy until suddenly a bunch of stuff happened in the span of a single page to force this trope out into the open. When I got to this part, I was so confused with what had just happened that I kind of just froze. It almost seemed as if certain events were thrown in to get the triangle over with and quickly check the “includes a love triangle” box. I think I would have preferred for it to be drawn out more (to see more interactions and developing feelings between the characters involved) or for it to not have happened at all (though as I’ve said I’m totally biased against love triangles).

You may resume reading if you skipped the previous section.

The other main pacing issue I had is something I keep going back and forth with because it’s what made the ending so unpredictable and the unpredictable ending is what is getting me excited for the rest of the trilogy. Basically there were several events that happened in The Unadjusteds that I would have expected to happen in the second or third installment and it has kind of thrown me for a loop. I’m curious to see what some of the other readers on this tour thought of the ending because I still don’t know if it was absolutely brilliant or super confusing.

That being said, I’ll definitely be continuing this series. If you’re a fan of YA dystopias like The Hunger Games and Divergent, definitely give this a try!

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