A review by hurrikanekathrina
The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He

3.0

“The dominos had been set centuries ago. One quake, and they all fell.”

This book was very... meh .
We alternate between the view points of two sisters: Cee, who is marooned on an island and struggles to find a way back home, and Kaysey, who lives in a floating eco-city designed to withstand the climate change that is rapidly destroying earth.
I strongly preferred Cee's viewpoint. I loved her narration and found her a rather endearing and relatable character. The survival plot was just more appealing to me than Kaysey's rather uneventful POV. Plus, I found Kaysey very hard to connect with. I get that that's the point of her character, but I think I could really be intrigued by an analytical, cold character like her otherwise, if it had been done in a more interesting way. In this case, I just found her POV bland and boring.

I was very excited about the premise of the eco-cities and to really dvelve into some world-builidng. I'm a huge Sci-Fi fan and the first impression of the world sounded very rich and promising. Sadly, no elaborate world-building happened. No elaborate anything happened, really. The whole plot was hasty, sketchy and glossed over important details like Joan He didn't care to bother about thinking through her own ideas. One of the most irritating holes in the narrative for me was

Spoiler

how the plan to basically put the entire human race into a 1000 year-long hibernation was rejected by more than half of the world population and than was just executed nonetheless about 6 years later. Sure, it was mentioned that Kay spent that time winning nations over to her plan, but it was rarely explainer how she managed to do that. I find it highely unlikely that there would be an unanimous approval of such a plan across the entire human race . And so it irritated me to no end that He decided to just not explain any of it. It felt like she just wanted to avoid plot holes and quickly move past them for the sake of the plot.

Also, the plot twist wasn't as satisfactory as I'd hoped. I didn't find it very original and was rather disappointed by how little fleshed-out it's revelation was.

However, if you're into quick mystery/sci-fi reads with a sort-of Black Mirror-esque tough and don't care too much about elaborate world-building or explanations and more about the ideas a story evokes in you, you will definitely enjoy this book.