Who: Sara GrantWhat: Dark Parties
When: August 3rd, 2011
Where: Little, Brown
Why: Premise Interest
How: For Review
Sixteen-year-old Neva has been trapped since birth. She was born and raised under the Protectosphere, in an isolated nation ruled by fear, lies, and xenophobia. A shield "protects" them from the outside world, but also locks the citizens inside. But there's nothing left on the outside, ever since the world collapsed from violent warfare. Or so the government says...Neva and her best friend Sanna believe the government is lying and stage a "dark party" to recruit members for their underground rebellion. But as Neva begins to uncover the truth, she realizes she must question everything she's ever known, including the people she loves the most.
Dark Parties is a dystopian about a girl named Neva who's society is trapped about something called the Protosphere, which forbids anyone from getting in or out while the goverment controls every aspect of your life. Population is dwindling, people are going missing, and rebellion is sparking all over the city. And in the center of this is Neva who just wants to find out what's going on and get the hell out of there.
Sara Grant writes with suspense and intrigue lining every page, and I was flipping faster and faster to find out what was going to happen to this society and what other secrets the goverment was keeping. The story was brilliant and Sara's grasp of story-telling and how to construct a dystopian was spot-on. This book would've been perfect for me if it hadn't been for the character.
I wanted to strangle most of them.
The main character Neva was headstrong and I like how she never gave up, but dude, your best friend's boyfriend? (not a spoiler since it happens on like page 5, right?) Never okay. Ever ever ever. But okay, alright, I could look past that because she was determined and I liked that. Then we have Braydon, who I loved to hate, and then just hated, and then everything's explained and now I just feel neutral towards the guy. Ethan was someone I felt so sad for, he was so crazy. But then there's Sanna.
My god. Sanna.
Sanna was dumb. She's one of those girls who will drop all of her priorities just because she has a boyfriend, can't have a normal conversation without bringing up how "a-ah-mazing (and if I had to read that once more, I would've freaked)" it was to have a boyfriend, and could forgive her boyfriend for doing something awful he started but not even her best friend. Just no. I hated her so much.
But on the other hand, a person has to be a really good story-teller to make me fall in love with the writing and story-building and still hate her characters. So do with that what you will.
Happy Reading!
