I received this novel as an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
What made me want to request this novel was that another author, M.R. Carey had positive words for it. M.R. Carey wrote the book The Girl With All the Gifts, which I absolutely adored. So if an author who wrote one of my favorite books has a good thing to say about another novel, you can bet that I’m going to read it!
Lalla has been fortunate enough to have grown up sheltered from the chaos that rules over London. But things are getting more dangerous. People are killing each other for bare essentials, and the police are getting rid of anyone without an identification card. When Lalla turns 16, her father decides that the time has come for them to escape – and escape comes in the form of a ship he has built to save a mere 500 people. But the utopia that her father has created isn’t all that it seems. There’s more food than anyone can imagine, but nothing grows; more clothes than anyone can wear but no way to fix them or make new ones … and no one knows where they are going.
I so desperately wanted to like this novel that I felt disappointed in myself for not enjoying this book. It had such an interesting concept but it was just not written in a style that worked for me. The main character, Lalla, is by far the most annoying character I have ever met. She is spoilt, and naive, and just seems to miss the point. Every single person on the ship is trying to explain everything to her but she chooses to ignore their words constantly. While I think she raises valid points, she just doesn’t get them across in the right way, and ended up frustrating me (and the actual passengers on the ship) to no end. There was this really awkwardly created love story put in, and while I understand why the author chose to put it in, it didn’t really work for me, either. The author’s writing style was also terribly convoluted and confusing, making me wonder what was the point of half of the words used. It’s like the author was trying to take a concept and present it in a very impressive way. But by overdoing it, she lost the message. In the end, this novel just did not work for me.
Happy reading ~