Series: The Darkest Minds (Page 1 of 2)

Synopsis:

Ruby can't look back. Fractured by an unbearable loss, she and the kids who survived the government's attack on Los Angeles travel north to regroup. With them is a prisoner: Clancy Gray, son of the president, and one of the few people Ruby has encountered with abilities like hers. Only Ruby has any power over him, and just one slip could lead to Clancy wreaking havoc on their minds.

They are armed only with a volatile secret: proof of a government conspiracy to cover up the real cause of IAAN, the disease that has killed most of America's children and left Ruby and others like her with powers the government will kill to keep contained. But internal strife may destroy their only chance to free the "rehabilitation camps" housing thousands of other Psi kids.

Meanwhile, reunited with Liam, the boy she would-and did-sacrifice everything for to keep alive, Ruby must face the painful repercussions of having tampered with his memories of her. She turns to Cole, his older brother, to provide the intense training she knows she will need to take down Gray and the government. But Cole has demons of his own, and one fatal mistake may be the spark that sets the world on fire.

“Are you sure this isn’t a nightmare?” he asked quietly. “And that we won’t just wake up?” I stared ahead at the road, the way the dust blowing in from the desert covered it with a faint golden sheen even as gray clouds began to gather over us.
“Yes,” I said after some time. “Because dreamers always wake up and leave their monsters behind.”

Do you guys ever just start reading a book and get so swept up that it consumes you until you’ve gobbled up every last word? Well that’s what happened to me these past few days as I’ve reread Never Fade and In the Afterlight. There’s something about certain YA books that really affects me. It’s not that I haven’t found other books that I’ve loved or have made me feel things, it’s just that none of them have reached in and grabbed my very heart and soul like those special YA ones I’ve found. This series and these characters will always be a prime example of this.

I read these for the first time a while ago, probably shortly after they came out, and the first time around I really wasn’t sure how to feel about this book. I mean, the ending was intense but when I started it this time, my expectations were a little lower because I remembered the problems that I had with it earlier. I don’t know what it was about this time around but it had me clinging to every word like I depended upon them to breathe fully. Like I started even looking forward to when I would have to feed my daughter in the middle of the night because it meant that since I was already awake, I might as well get some reading in.

This whole time, from the moment we met, he’d been waiting for me to realize he’d known me all along, and he had never once wanted me to change.

Mind you, I still recognized those same problems I had the first time around—not much at all happened for the first, oh 75% of the book, Ruby was being a pain in the ass, Liam was being a pain the in ass, COLE was being a pain in the ass…that list kind of goes on and on, lol. I can see how some people didn’t like this because of those reasons…but. But. The ending. The ending that had my heart pounding and had me crying—again—even though this time around I knew exactly what was going to happen.

It might be because this, to me, is a dystopian plot that is the most realistic of any that I have read. I mean come on..it starts out with the threat of chemical warfare and spirals when our government tries combating that by adding a substance to the water that ended up causing a mutation in kids. And to top it off, the very government that made the decision to put said substance in the water without telling ANYONE is the same one that builds the camps, keeps the kids there for “rehabilitation,” say that the outside world hasn’t send aid because they gave up on the people of the United States (even though they have sent rations, medicine, etc.), and whatever other shitty thing they did to cause the wreck the country became. Like that just doesn’t even seen close to out of the realm of possibility.

Another reason these books are so addicting is that the characters are so real. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it for about a day now and I think that Ruby might seriously be my favorite female (or at least top five) character of all time. Her character arc in this series is INCREDIBLE. She starts off as a meek, timid girl and winds up being the person responsible for shutting the camps down. Yes she had help but let’s face it, it wouldn’t have happened without her. She makes mistakes and I got so pissed at her time and time again in this book for thinking she wasn’t good enough or not confiding in Liam because she thought he couldn’t handle it but…that’s so human. She’s SEVENTEEN and has never actually been able to be a teen but she is still allowed to act like one from time to time.

I could go on and one for several more pages about everyone else but I’ll just say that Liam is a sweet cinnamon roll who is literally too good for this earth (he’s also hands down in my top five BBFs), I was heartbroken over (view spoiler), elated at Zu’s first words, and cracking up over Vida and Chubs’ banter/relationship, and felt so wildly giddy when Ruby was reunited with Sam and got the hell out of that camp. It honestly gave me the goosebumps when she was begging Liam, Harry, and Vida to help her walk out because after all she’d been through, she needed to walk out on her own two legs. And she did.

It rained the day they brought us to Thurmond.
And it rained the day I walked out.

Synopsis:

Five years after the destruction of the so-called rehabilitation camps that imprisoned her and countless other Psi kids, seventeen-year-old Suzume "Zu" Kimura has assumed the role of spokesperson for the interim government, fighting for the rights of Psi kids against a growing tide of misinformation and prejudice. But when she is accused of committing a horrifying act, she is forced to go on the run once more in order to stay alive.

Determined to clear her name, Zu finds herself in an uncomfortable alliance with Roman and Priyanka, two mysterious Psi who could either help her prove her innocence or betray her before she gets the chance. But as they travel in search of safety and answers, and Zu grows closer to the people she knows she shouldn't trust, they uncover even darker things roiling beneath the veneer of the country's recovery. With her future-and the future of all Psi-on the line, Zu must use her powerful voice to fight back against forces that seek to drive the Psi into the shadows and save the friends who were once her protectors.

From #1 New York Times best-selling author Alexandra Bracken comes a harrowing story of resilience, resistance, and reckoning that will thrill loyal fans and new readers alike.

You can get up.
You have to get back up.
I could get back up. I could do it myself. Again, and again, and again. As long as there was breath in my body, I could get back up.

WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT?!?!?!?!? Alright, people. It had been a LONG time since a book has made me ~feel~ this way so you better believe this review is going to be a jumbled mess of thoughts and feelings. First off, this was obviously SO GOOD. Like, a billion stars to Alexandra Bracken for this entire series. I’m angry with myself, though, because I was reading this on an app that didn’t allow highlights and I was only smart enough to actually write one measly quote down so I’ll have to add more the next time around—just know there were so many great ones. SO MANY. (This review might also be half in caps too, we’ll see, I’m just really pumped up about how good it was.)

I started reading this a few days but didn’t actually get into it until I had some time to myself yesterday morning. Once I started, I was COMPLETELY hooked. See, that’s the thing about these books and Bracken’s writing. I become so immersed that I have to drag my eyes away from the writing and when I do, it takes me a few seconds to come back to the real world. That’s when you know you’re reading something amazing. This book gave me the butterflies, it made me shake with rage, and it made me buzz with anticipation. It left me out of breath and has me hoping that even though it wasn’t ended on a cliffhanger, that we will get more from this world—especially Zu’s perspective.

She was always a character that I loved in The Darkest Minds series but getting this entire book from her perspective was amazing. We may not have actually heard her speak until Into the Afterlight but you can tell that once she started, there was no going back. I LOVED when she was in Moore’s facility and was basically having PTSD flashbacks to her time in Caledonia that she finally came to the conclusion that she was not alright and that that was okay. She wasn’t alright because horrible things had been done to her, and were still being done but she could do whatever it took to help turn things around for the Psi kids. She has grown SO much since we were first introduced to her that it gives me the shivers thinking about it. I am so proud of her.

In this book we are introduced to a few new characters, mainly Roman and Priyanka. I LOVED THEM SO MUCHHHH. They became so much more than what I first thought they would when I started the book. Roman is so serious and so caring—he would literally take a bullet for you. Priya was hilarious. She has so much sass and so many good one liners she reminded me a lot of Vida but without the potty mouth lol. Speaking of Vida though—I was so glad that we still were able to see all of our old favorites. Ugh I love them all so much I think I need to drop the other books that I’m reading and go re-read all of those books next.

I don’t really feel like getting into the plot much because I fully enjoyed going into the book and not quite knowing what to expect. All you really need to know is that things are not all fine and dandy in America. Yes the camps had been shut down and Cruz had been trying to get more rights for the Psi kids, but that doesn’t mean that things turned into rainbows and puppies overnight. Not in the slightest. In fact, some parts were still so horrible that it made me sick to my stomach, thinking as if those things were happening in real life (and in some aspects of this world and this government I think that they are). This is why I need more out of this story. I need to know what happens with Zu and the gang. I need to know how she continues to fight for their rights. And most importantly, I need to know what happens with the stupid, slimy, manipulative prick that is Clancy Grey…