"Can you hear Atlantia breathing?
For as long as she can remember, Rio has dreamt of the sand and sky Above—of life beyond her underwater city of Atlantia. But in a single moment, all her plans for the future are thwarted when her twin sister, Bay, makes an unexpected decision, stranding Rio Below. Alone, ripped away from the last person who knew Rio’s true self—and the powerful siren voice she has long hidden—she has nothing left to lose.
Guided by a dangerous and unlikely mentor, Rio formulates a plan that leads to increasingly treacherous questions about her mother’s death, her own destiny, and the complex system constructed to govern the divide between land and sea. Her life and her city depend on Rio to listen to the voices of the past and to speak long-hidden truths."
Can you hear me sighing? Because seriously that's what this book left me doing.
I'm going to be honest, the first chapter was awesome. If you've read the Matched series, you know that Condie has a really beautiful way with words... and she knows exactly how to use them to draw you in. She would get an A+ all around the table for the first chapter, because it made me gasp by the end.
What I do want to point out is that the first chapter REALLY reminded me of Divergent by Veronica Roth. You know when they're with they're parents and everyones all nervous because they have to decide their faction?
Except in Atlantia, it's just Rio and her twin sister, Bay (Bae? Bey? crap I forgot already, sorry).
So here Rio is, exactly like Tris deciding on whether she should choose life in the "Below" (aka underwater) or "Above" (land). Only one sibling can go Above or Below. Her dream was always to go Above, but her sister was all,
So what does Rio do? YOU GUESSED IT. You'll have to read and find out the details, but it's in the first chapter so I really spoiled nothing. Rio is Tris in an alternate universe where being complacent is her thing and not being a badass.
So there's love, there's trust, there's a life-deciding decision to be made, then it ends in betrayal. That's the first chapter, and quite honestly the excitement really ended there. It became monotonous, Rio is reaching for a goal and quite frankly, she's mostly running around in circles waiting for it to happen. This is 85% of the book. Constant talk about something that's going to happen and yet it never does.
It fell flat, which really sucks because I wanted to love this book so much.
The characters were dull, the world was dull, the events were dull, the plot twists were dull. Do you get my point? It was dull.
As most YA books go, there is obviously going to be a love interest. And as much as I wanted to like him, "True Beck" (yes that's his name... seriously, Condie?) also fell very flat. It was too forced, and quite frankly it was unnecessary. This book is NOT ABOUT ROMANCE, it's about family. Condie even admits it in the acknowledgements. So why was this unnecessary romance was forced upon us? I shall never know. He would have still helped Rio if they didn't become love interests, he wanted answers and so did she.
Sigh.
That's what I'm left with, a sigh that lasts forever.
