A review by rach
XVI by Julia Karr

2.0

For someone who says they don't want anything to do with sex, Nina sure talked and obsessed about it a lot. I wanted to like this book - dystopian worlds can be really fascinating, and I think there's a good message in not allowing the media to dictate what we believe and say, but the characters were inconsistent and unengaging, and the plot was overly complicated. I couldn't figure out why Nina was worried about whether a boy liked her when she was supposedly dealing with the deal of her mother. I know everyone grieves differently, and Nina has a lot of stuff going on regarding her sister's safety and her dad, but as someone who has recently lost a parent, her reactions and thoughts seemed entirely out of place. When those basic details felt wrong to me, I wasn't able to connect to the story, and I spent most of the time wishing it would speed up the pace.