Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Ceux qu'il nous faut retrouver

Solidly written with some truly beautiful sections. Lots of really great foreshadowing that you don’t necessarily realize until you look back on it. Parts of the story can be a bit jarring and confusing, though He mostly smooths these out quickly.

Characters: 4⭐️/5

Beautifully different characters with realistic flaws and goals. The end felt a bit forced onto the characters, rather than created by the characters. Some sacrifices for plot over characters.

Plot: 4.75⭐️/5

Superb plot. Everything felt wrapped up at the end, but not too neatly. Some good surprises that didn’t feel forced or fake.

Post-Reading Rating: 5⭐️/5

Amazing plot. Interesting, thoughtful, well-developed and thought out.

Final Rating: 4.5⭐️/5

Notes: Joan He definitely sacrificed a bit of characterization for plot. Feels like a gem of the genre, regardless.

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awxiee's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I was confused most of the time. It is kinda boring at some parts, tho it became better during the revelation part.

the ending is open for interpretation. After finishing the book, I pondered for an hour about whether Cee went back to Kay or she just swam in the ocean for herself

the world-building is okay, although I would prefer it if it's more descriptive, because it was so confusing, especially at first.

I actually like the storyline, I will deffo think about this book in the future bc this type of story will stay in me,,, and the cover is so stunning! Absolutely one of my fav book cover ever <3

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sarah984's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Overall I enjoyed this one. The author’s note mentioned it feeling weird to edit this book in 2020, and it definitely feels weird to read after having lived through so many climate emergencies in 2021.

Most of the characters are interesting and the central dilemmas of the book feel real. I loved the robot U-me and Cee’s routine on the island. However, I thought the romance was extremely silly and the ending was a little muddled.

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f18's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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bookcrushin's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This book is told out of sequence with wild twists and very cool science and futuristic ideals for saving the world and the people in it.

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jennamcclendon's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Okay, WOW. That was a WILD RIDE. Joan He KNOWS how to write a plot twist, and when I say this book was full of twists, I mean that it’s all back to back, continuous streams of “WTF”, sobbing over those moments of craving something so precious yet so impossible, and getting so excited and/or shocked have to put the book down. The middle of the story seemed the strongest to me. It may have just been me being stupid, but the beginning and end kind of confused me. In the beginning I was struggling to figure out transitions between past and present and how the timeline worked out (which is actually more complicated than you might think, but it makes more sense in the middle when things are revealed). There was also the struggle of figuring out what the heck happened to the world and why everything is the way it is in society and with the characters. In the end, I feel like some of their actions didn’t make a lot of sense, and I still had unanswered questions about the plot at the end about what was resolved or what wasn’t and why characters did what they did. I would have loved to rate this book higher especially with the writing and twists and concepts, but because it was so confusing and the ending didn’t really make a whole lot of sense, I went with a 3.5ish rating! Overall, though, I loved it. It reminded me a lot of The Loneliest Girl in the Universe, one of my favorites. If you like scifi, mystery, post-apocalyptic societies, and major plot twists that make you question your existence and make you feel a million emotions at once, I highly recommend!

A quote I liked:

“All we can do is live and feel as much as we can, to rebel against the life and feelings we can’t control.”

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emily_mh's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Okay this book hit me quite hard which is the main reason why I've rated it so highly. It was confronting and haunting; whenever I finished a reading stint I had to stare into space for a bit and process what I had just read. It raised so many challenging questions, like how much personal freedom we can morally have in an environmental crisis, and who gets to decide who survives such a crisis. I was fascinated by how He envisioned the future of humanity, especially the solutions people made to reduce their carbon footprint. I also loved the sister relationship in this. They had such deep connection and love for one another.

I docked my rating half a star for two reasons. The first is that the writing could be very confusing from Kasey's perspective, both in terms of world-building and interpreting her personality. The pacing in this perspective also grew to be quite erratic. The second reason was the romance.

I wish that Cee and Hero's relationship had been platonic. Or at least if it had to be romantic/sexual, I wish that their physical intimacy wasn't the reason why Cee's happiness spiked so high. Emotional connection provides happiness too, and more stable happiness that I feel that Kasey would have programmed for.

In all honesty though, when a book impacts me the way this one did, reasons such as those aforementioned aren't enough to significantly affect the overall star rating, hence only a half-star dock.

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courtneyfalling's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I'll start by saying science fiction isn't normally my thing. I picked this book up because it's been near-universally loved on BookTube, I liked the climate justice concept, and admittedly the cover was gorgeous. But it was... underwhelming. Some of the pacing felt off: I wanted more reveals about Kasey's background in particular earlier, since so many of her actions and motivations didn't make sense without fuller context. On a deeper level, some of the book's entire framing felt off: I found myself agreeing with Meridian a lot that Kasey, Actinium, and P2C/the officials in the eco-cities were elitist gatekeepers with no real authority to rank the climate footprint of those in the territories, especially not when withholding supplies and offshoring the ickier parts of lifestyle maintenance to them. The idea that "it's every individual's responsibility to live greenly and they and their descendants deserve significant punishment if they do not" submerges the fact that someone is subjectively offering that punishment and totally ignores the political economy that makes green footprints much more easily available to a select few. And on reflection after finishing the book I realized the main reason I'm sticking on this moral part is that at its core it reads as eco-fascist.

Even without that huge sticking point, I struggled relating to any of the main characters. Kasey is so science-focused to a fault, where it almost felt like Joan He was trying as hard as possible to make Kasey bot-like and unlikeable (and part of what rubbed me really wrong about this was that it ended up with Kasey feeling autism-coded and her most autism-coded traits being the 'worst' parts of her representation). By comparison, Cee seemed so much more human, and I feel like that was an obvious point. The twist happened, I was like what for maybe a chapter or two, and then it just sunk in, like duh.

Also... idk. I like enemies-to-lovers sometimes but the whole plot line between Cee and Hero was hard to connect with.

"Girl programmed to find her sister and boy programmed by the sister's former-partner-turned-archenemy to stop the girl at whatever cost" was much more of a heavy-handed, symbolic device than an actual relationship or space for character development. Hero's murder attempts got old quickly and really made the whole thing unromantic and frustrating.

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