Op zoek naar een boek voor de Forumchallenge ABC Titel waarvan de titel begint met een X kwam ik deze tegen. De blurb was een beetje vreemd, maar een challenge is een challenge. En het boek viel niet tegen. Ik vond het eigenlijk wel leuk, hoewel een beetje vreemd. Het boek speelt zich af ergens ver in de toekomst in een totaal andere wereld dan die we nu kennen. Alle meisjes krijgen als ze zestien worden een tattoo op hun pols gezet: XVI. Daarmee zijn ze vanaf dan vogelvrij voor alle mannen en jongens die sex met hen willen hebben.
Nina woont met haar moeder en zusje Dee en stiefvader Ed en wordt bijna 16 en zij is erg bang voor haar zestiende verjaardag en wat daarna allemaal kan gebeuren. Dan wordt haar moeder vermoordt en gaat ze met haar zus bij haar grootouders worden. Voor haar moeder sterft heeft die haar nog een groot geheim verteld. Samen met een aantal oude en nieuwe vrienden probeert Nina het geheim te ontrafelen en voor haar zusje te zorgen, die uit de handen van Ed moet worden gehouden. Aardig boek, met iets te veel herhalingen. ( )

The concept and the blurb drew me in, and I was excited to read this, but in all honesty... it was just something of a let-down, and definitely not enough to pull me into reading the next book in the series.

All-told, the only character who had any depth was the narrator--and even she was a bit too much of EXACTLY what you'd expect from a narrator of a YA dystopian book centered on a 15/16-year-old girl. With the other characters being either stereotypes or just, simply, very flat, the work really needed to be able to depend on outstanding plotting and/or writing, and it just couldn't. The world's details were interesting, for what they were, but a lot more vague than I'd expect from a book like this, and far too predictable. The foreshadowing and the various ideas (again, the ideas being exactly what you'd expect from a YA dystopian) were also so heavy-handed that the book went back and forth between feeling contrived and being predictable, to the point where I never felt any real suspense about what was coming, and the ending ended up being incredibly anti-climactic.

I do think the author had a lot of good ideas, but perhaps felt like it being a YA book was an excuse to get lazy on the details(?) and focus instead on a lot of angst, but with characters who just weren't that strong or developed, there just wasn't enough here to give the book real substance.

So, could I recommend it? Nope, I'm afraid not. I probably won't be picking up more work by Karr, either, since the concept here struck me, but the execution just wasn't up to what it needed to be. ( )

Still trying to figure out how I feel about this one. The writing was a little clunky at times and it took me awhile to get into it. Still, overall it was entertaining.

3.75 I think... ( )

3.5 ( )

Plot: The biggest reason I decided to give this book 2 stars instead of 1 is because of the plot. It was somewhat unique and kept me interested until the last couple of pages. The book is set in the future, but it’s a very different future than most people write about. It made me glad that I was born in this century and not 140 years into the future. But this was probably the only interesting aspect of the whole plot. Overall, the plot was very confusing and unorganized. Things just kept randomly happening and there was really no connection between them. Also, Nina was terrified of turning 16 from page one, but nothing ever happened that really explained why she was so scared. I thought this was going to be the major focus of the book, but it was barely ever covered unless Nina was complaining about it. At the end, I was just as confused as I was in the beginning and I feel that a second book is needed in order for us to understand and know everything the author wants us to because so many questions were left unanswered; not just for the reader, but also for Nina.

Characters: The characters were all pretty cool and they had the potential to be even better, however, they never reached that potential because the writing was just not there to help. I couldn’t connect with the characters and that really took away from the book. Something tragic happens to Nina’s family in the first couple of chapters, but I didn’t really feel anything for her or her family; I knew it was a very bad thing that no one wants to go through, but I couldn’t get myself to really care. Nina also seemed to overreact to almost anything. She would randomly freak out or not care enough which I just thought was really weird. She was very confusing, awkward and paranoid. The other characters were about the same. There was a lot of mystery surrounding Nina’s new friends and we never really get to know what they know or who they really are.

Cover: I like the cover a lot which is also one reason I even chose to read this book. I am sad to say that I do choose books by their covers most of the time.

Overall Impression: Not my favorite dystopian novel, but fans of The Uglies Trilogy or The Hunger Games might find it to be interesting and a good read. ( )