Reviews - The Toll | The StoryGraph

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10.9k reviews for:

The Toll

Neal Shusterman

4.15 AVERAGE

sarita_dinamita's review against another edition

3.25

challenging emotional tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

thequietpursuits's review against another edition

4.75

emotional mysterious 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: Complicated

booksnapsandcatnaps's review against another edition

4.0

emotional hopeful 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: Complicated

This was a really satisfying conclusion to the series. I loved that we got to see what happened to all of the characters, which gave the closure I was hoping for. The overarching message of the trilogy came through clearly and tied everything together in a thoughtful way.

That being said, my biggest issue was with the villain. After all that build up across three books, the final conflict felt a little underwhelming. It wrapped up so quickly, and I thought there could have been more fallout or at least a glimpse into what comes next. While the ending did carry a sense of hope for the future of this world, I missed out on fully seeing that hope take shape.

Even with those frustrations, I definitely recommend this trilogy. It is smart, creative, and engaging, and if you are looking to get into sci-fi or dystopian books, this is a great place to start.

rmcneill17's review against another edition

4.5

medium-paced

huik's review against another edition

2.0

This book was a huge let down for me from Books 1 and 2. Although the plot was expansive and wide in scope, it was quite long, and nothing had really happened in Parts 1 and 2. Many of my favourite characters felt underused when they could have had more interesting and contributing development to the story. Parts 1 and 2 could have been summarized to a few chapters and then cue the time skip.

My biggest qualm with the book is how they treated Rowan. Rowan went from being main character in book 1 to barely there??? Once again, we get almost zero Rowan and Citra interaction (not to mention the 117 years at the end...). Rowan got done dirty.

The Tonists plot was lacking a bit of something for me, I was waiting for a twist but none came. The fail safe was underwhelming for me - why didn't the finding scythes just go with the fail safe model in the beginning?

emilyterry's review against another edition

Holy cow what a trip!! I really liked the way this book ended! I liked that Tyger's consciousness got restored and that's how Goddard got what was coming to him!! It really freaked me out with the whole decapitation thing anyway. I also liked the little journal entries that gave teasers for what was going to happen later on. I loved that Rowan waited for Citra at the end when she went deadish<3 I also really liked that Goddard got to be a merciful scythe still. And I liked that the Fail-Safe was disease being the new harbinger of death. I think that's a much better system than scythes.

I also really liked most of the characters- I loved Greyson and I liked all the side stories going on.

What I didn't like was all of the terrible things that happened, but I guess that's just kind of part of this story anyway. It took me a little while to read this book because I never really wanted to go pick it up and read it, which usually means I'm not actually enjoying a book very much. But I really feel like I did enjoy this one, it was a great series with an original and creative premise and good character development, with lots of good strings running throughout that got tied together at the end.