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big_m54's review
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
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? Yes
3.0
This book is something that had been on my mind for a while. I got it near 2 years ago but couldn’t ever put my all into reading it. Despite this I loved the vibe and the characters my mind would often wander to it. In a fuel of jealous rage to read more books than [REDACTED] I pushed my way through. I finally finished it on the bus, having fun annotating and writing my thoughts. Unfortunately the ending absolutely ruined this experience. The whole point of the book was finding out who was vandalizing the school but for some reason that was abandoned to push forward this new plot point of ruining the school mean girl. The main plot, the one thing the book was all building up to was shoved into the epilogue, a maybe 5 page resolution to all of this. Somehow the characters even managed to seem OOC by the end something I’m amazed at. How do you mess up your own characters?? I loved the experience of reading the book but the book itself could have been better.
carryonamelia's review
4.0
4.5 stars
ARC was provided at BookCon by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I really didn’t expect to like this book, if we’re being honest. It was being pushed out at BookCon for free and I took it because there were a lot of them. However, I really ended up liking this book. The character dynamics were so well done and the plot was really engaging. To be quite honest, the ending was cliffhangery and I hope there’s more to come.
ARC was provided at BookCon by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I really didn’t expect to like this book, if we’re being honest. It was being pushed out at BookCon for free and I took it because there were a lot of them. However, I really ended up liking this book. The character dynamics were so well done and the plot was really engaging. To be quite honest, the ending was cliffhangery and I hope there’s more to come.
prathaaaaaaaaaaa_'s review against another edition
4.0
I just love this book so much for no clear reason
ameserole's review
3.0
Rated was a fun book to listen to. Don't know if I would survive in a world where you are rated until a certain point. Doesn't sound a lot of fun but I did enjoy the whole concept about how it wasn't real. Of course, when you are younger and all you know is the whole rating either helps or hurts you - you would believe it.
So, for people to start believing that it didn't matter or that it was fake started to make me more invested into the book. Of course, the kids are put through a sort of trial in this book. Towards the end, I didn't quite know who was behind it all but when I got to it, well I wasn't one hundred percent surprised either.
Definitely enjoyed this book and hope another one will come out.
So, for people to start believing that it didn't matter or that it was fake started to make me more invested into the book. Of course, the kids are put through a sort of trial in this book. Towards the end, I didn't quite know who was behind it all but when I got to it, well I wasn't one hundred percent surprised either.
Definitely enjoyed this book and hope another one will come out.
ellesandiego's review
3.0
3.5*
Very good plot, not so great execution. It kept me hooked but the ending was very disappointing. The representation really surprised me, I found this book from a school book fair and all the kids in my grade enjoyed it and i was extremely surprised to find representation considering the blatant homophobia im surrounded by in school. But I really enjoyed this!! Definition of pleasant surprise.
Very good plot, not so great execution. It kept me hooked but the ending was very disappointing. The representation really surprised me, I found this book from a school book fair and all the kids in my grade enjoyed it and i was extremely surprised to find representation considering the blatant homophobia im surrounded by in school. But I really enjoyed this!! Definition of pleasant surprise.
alongreader's review
3.0
3.5 rounded up
I thought this would be a full on dystopian, with cameras and watchful guards everywhere and people trying desperately to earn more points. Maybe a black market, or a scheme where friends mark each other up as often as they can get away with. Instead, it's basically a teen heist with occasional worries about The Numbers. It's definitely not bad, it just took me a little while to readjust my expectations.
The story is told in rotating POVs. It took me a little while to remember who everyone was, but that's always been an issue with me. It took even longer for any of the storylines to cross, and I felt that most of the story was lead up to a rushed end. But I did enjoy it very much and I hope that Melissa isn't planning to leave it there. I'd like to find out what happens next.
Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.
And that was how Chase Donovan, star pitcher of the Maplethorpe Academy baseball team, regional champions for seven years running, found himself standing before the future valedictorian of his senior class, Bex Johnson.
They stared at each other for a frozen moment, the three feet between them feeling miles wide. He’d never spoken to her before, despite the fact that they’d been in school together for years. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Bex. It’s just that he had nothing in common with her. She was everything he wasn’t. Academically gifted. Multitalented. Well-rounded. A girl like Bex didn’t bother with guys like him.
And if he was honest, guys like him didn’t often bother with girls like her. They were too smart. Too unpredictable. Most of the guys on the team didn’t like it when girls were better than them at things, and Bex was good at pretty much everything.
Chase did one thing extremely well. And if he wasn’t allowed to do that one thing anymore, he had nothing else to fall back on.
I thought this would be a full on dystopian, with cameras and watchful guards everywhere and people trying desperately to earn more points. Maybe a black market, or a scheme where friends mark each other up as often as they can get away with. Instead, it's basically a teen heist with occasional worries about The Numbers. It's definitely not bad, it just took me a little while to readjust my expectations.
The story is told in rotating POVs. It took me a little while to remember who everyone was, but that's always been an issue with me. It took even longer for any of the storylines to cross, and I felt that most of the story was lead up to a rushed end. But I did enjoy it very much and I hope that Melissa isn't planning to leave it there. I'd like to find out what happens next.
Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.
And that was how Chase Donovan, star pitcher of the Maplethorpe Academy baseball team, regional champions for seven years running, found himself standing before the future valedictorian of his senior class, Bex Johnson.
They stared at each other for a frozen moment, the three feet between them feeling miles wide. He’d never spoken to her before, despite the fact that they’d been in school together for years. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Bex. It’s just that he had nothing in common with her. She was everything he wasn’t. Academically gifted. Multitalented. Well-rounded. A girl like Bex didn’t bother with guys like him.
And if he was honest, guys like him didn’t often bother with girls like her. They were too smart. Too unpredictable. Most of the guys on the team didn’t like it when girls were better than them at things, and Bex was good at pretty much everything.
Chase did one thing extremely well. And if he wasn’t allowed to do that one thing anymore, he had nothing else to fall back on.
paragraphsandpages's review
2.0
This was another one of those books that I read with my friend broken up over a week. We generally go for unique contemporaries or thrillers, and this seemed to fit the bill! However, the book itself didn't actually spend too much time focusing on the uniqueness of the rating system, nor on the mystery style plot it seemed to contain, but rather on the characters themselves and their (many) individual issues. Additionally, most of these issues were ones that teens in our own society would have, with only slight variations because of this new rating system. Honestly, if you removed the rating system entirely, the book would kinda just be the same.
What this book had: diverse characters with cute relationships (as a group and in pairs)
What this book lacked: plot, pacing, focus, and depth
From the beginning, I knew this book was trying to tackle Too Much. There were 6 characters, all with very intense set of problems (abusive parents (physical and emotional), eating disorders, dead parents, distant parents, sick siblings, secretly adopted, etc, etc), and only a mere 330 pages to solve all of those issues and the plot itself, which was tied to a brand new rating system that needed explanation, a large mystery needing solving, and a society needing fixing. All in all, that's a lot to accomplish in a single book, especially if you want me to connect with and feel for the large cast by the end of it, as each only got about 5 chapters in their point of view.
This book was able to successfully accomplish one thing, and that was making me like the characters. This is due to the focus of the book for the first 60%, which was basically to individually spend a lot of time with the characters without bringing up the plot much, as well as start pairing off some of the members of the group. They didn't even truly team up (or feel bothered to try and solve the mystery) until 70% into the book, which is extremely late. The pacing of this book was just so incredibly off, with characters finally having very obvious revelations way too late or not at all, and it was just in general too odd. The ending suffered heavily due to this, as the novel spent most of the time describing how terrible the lives of these teens were or how dramatic their problems were only for them to be solved in the final chapter suddenly, with only a slightly longer explanation of these solutions in the epilogue. Additionally, a large part of the plot and a lot of clues weren't even addressed until the epilogue, which was also just a weird choice.
Additionally, the Too Muchness of this book meant that there wasn't really any depth to anything that was able to be discussed for more than two pages, and the focus was extremely all over the place, and entirely dependent on the POV you were currently reading from. It just didn't feel cohesive, and my friend even commented about halfway that the novel read more like an anthology in that 3 different stories were being told, they just happened to be taking place in the same world/setting/time.
The plot was also just odd? It felt both big (like, change the world level) and small (change your life level), and never actually decided what it wanted to do. It also just never intrigued me? Like I never necessarily cheered for them to take down the rating system or figure out who was sending weird messages and drawing graffiti on everything. We were just given so little crumbs as readers, especially for the first 60%, that by the time the plot actually became important, we were already checked out or no longer cared about that aspect of the book. Plus the end reveal was too obvious and I didn't care for it either. (And there's this hanging thread that they just, never take about again? )
Honestly, this book would've been a lot better if the rating system was just removed and it was about the teens finding each other and finding themselves/the strength to stand up for themselves. That part was done really well, it was just bad at everything else.
What this book had: diverse characters with cute relationships (as a group and in pairs)
What this book lacked: plot, pacing, focus, and depth
From the beginning, I knew this book was trying to tackle Too Much. There were 6 characters, all with very intense set of problems (abusive parents (physical and emotional), eating disorders, dead parents, distant parents, sick siblings, secretly adopted, etc, etc), and only a mere 330 pages to solve all of those issues and the plot itself, which was tied to a brand new rating system that needed explanation, a large mystery needing solving, and a society needing fixing. All in all, that's a lot to accomplish in a single book, especially if you want me to connect with and feel for the large cast by the end of it, as each only got about 5 chapters in their point of view.
This book was able to successfully accomplish one thing, and that was making me like the characters. This is due to the focus of the book for the first 60%, which was basically to individually spend a lot of time with the characters without bringing up the plot much, as well as start pairing off some of the members of the group. They didn't even truly team up (or feel bothered to try and solve the mystery) until 70% into the book, which is extremely late. The pacing of this book was just so incredibly off, with characters finally having very obvious revelations way too late or not at all, and it was just in general too odd. The ending suffered heavily due to this, as the novel spent most of the time describing how terrible the lives of these teens were or how dramatic their problems were only for them to be solved in the final chapter suddenly, with only a slightly longer explanation of these solutions in the epilogue. Additionally, a large part of the plot and a lot of clues weren't even addressed until the epilogue, which was also just a weird choice.
Additionally, the Too Muchness of this book meant that there wasn't really any depth to anything that was able to be discussed for more than two pages, and the focus was extremely all over the place, and entirely dependent on the POV you were currently reading from. It just didn't feel cohesive, and my friend even commented about halfway that the novel read more like an anthology in that 3 different stories were being told, they just happened to be taking place in the same world/setting/time.
The plot was also just odd? It felt both big (like, change the world level) and small (change your life level), and never actually decided what it wanted to do. It also just never intrigued me? Like I never necessarily cheered for them to take down the rating system or figure out who was sending weird messages and drawing graffiti on everything. We were just given so little crumbs as readers, especially for the first 60%, that by the time the plot actually became important, we were already checked out or no longer cared about that aspect of the book. Plus the end reveal was too obvious and I didn't care for it either. (And there's this hanging thread that they just, never take about again?
Spoiler
what happened to london girl??? is she dead???? will i ever know???Honestly, this book would've been a lot better if the rating system was just removed and it was about the teens finding each other and finding themselves/the strength to stand up for themselves. That part was done really well, it was just bad at everything else.
kawarwick's review
4.0
The ending saved this book from being 3 stars. The book trailer was awesome and all my library kids loved it. It was a huge seller at my Scholastic book fair. I read it and was a little disappointed. I liked the ending even though there's a set up for a sequel. The rest of the book was meh...a little dull for my taste.