Reviews

Gone by Michael Grant

gooseluce's review

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

4.0

marco5599's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Way more fun than expected. Lord of the Flies meets school of the X-men? Something like that, I guess. YA, yes, but dark YA. There's some pretty chilling stuff going on here. And with hardly any puppy love or whiny emo nonsense to get in the way, always on the move, often on fast-forward. Surprisingly entertaining!

charlotteg's review

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3.0

3.8

suomalainenka's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

biamatos_7's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

reagan23's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-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

5.0

aggressive_nostalgia's review

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Wow. This book is psychotically dark. A bunch of kids, the oldest of whom are barely teenagers, caught up in a lot of murder and power plays most adults never have to think about, let alone live through. Caine finds it far too easy to commit some pretty gruesome atrocities, and Drake - no fourteen-year-old should take pleasure in murdering other kids. This was so dark, but that's part of what made it completely gripping.



The character development was really good. I think Quinn - despite his capriciousness - may have actually been my favorite character. I think I kind of felt like I can relate to him in some ways (and he wears a fedora, which is pretty sweet). His and Sam's careening friendship definitely kept me anchored to the story earlier on, before all the suspense dropped in. And the rest of the characters weren't flat, either. The author did such a good job of infusing them with not only diverse powers and abilities, but digging deeper into their psyches than most teen novels might, that it really expanded the dystopian feel of the story. I was also impressed with the way the powers were kind of a secondary thing; they added depth and a means to a story that was going to play out regardless of the crazy mutations or not. The science-fiction plays were just a bonus, something to lend more excitement to an already compelling story. The plot itself was really well fleshed-out, too. It had more originality than I was expecting, and the author did an excellent job of playing out the twists a little at a time, revealing enough to hold the reader's interest but not too much to ruin the story. I admit I really wasn't expecting the cliffhanger (that was maddening). All the same, I didn't feel like too much was left hanging. A surprising amount was resolved, enough that I don't feel like I wasted time reading this, but there's still one enormous question and a somewhat smaller issue that need answering, and that's what's going to draw my interest to the next book.



This was actually a really good novel. (The only thing that really threw me off was the talking coyotes. That was most definitely on the other side of bizarre, not to mention random.) Still, I would recommend this (though probably to teens older than the kids in this book, mostly). Amazing, and I'll be on the lookout for the sequel.

glychee's review

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2.0

Easy to start, a nightmare to finish

tmholsman_1994's review

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5.0

After rereading after years of forgetting what it was about I realized that it is still a phenomenal book. It has some decent character development and an interesting post-apocalyptic storyline. All the characters we meet they seem to be easily forgettable. We have the main ones that are our heroes and then the main villains and then a slew of side characters that are all somewhat forgettable. Great storyline so far, but at times it was a little dry.

josephine_r's review

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2.0

This book had a very good idea just dragged out and took me a lot of effort to focus and get into. I did enjoy some of the characters a lot bit with so many I couldn't always relate or understand them,not enough character build up. I won't be contuining with the series. It just wasn't worth it for me.