misslexilouwho 's review for:

This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada

3.0

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Content Warning: Cannibalism, Gore, Plague/Illness, Violence, Human Experimentation

Part of the reason I gave a lower rating to this book is because of the brutal depictions of injury and overall gore. I am extremely squeamish and was not expecting this much gore in the novel; I think it was made worse by the fact that I did listen to the audiobook.

This book had such an amazing premise - a virus that causes people to blow up, and when in the second stage people are brought to madness and must murder to gain immunity to the virus? Coding and genetic enhancements? Badass female character who loses her father? Dope! Unfortunately, I felt that the novel had missed the mark. I still enjoyed it, but it did not really meet my expectations.

One of my biggest gripes with this book was the romance. Maybe it's because I'm just tired of the insta-love trope in YA novels, but there was no reason for the romance subplot. I felt like Cat and Cole went from sort of enemies to lovers way too quickly

Spoiler

(though once we learn that Cat is apparently Jun Bei - who Cole was in love with before - it makes the instalove a little more understandable, but it was still way too much)

and I felt like there was no real reason for the romantic aspect of their relationship. There was this weird love square relationship with Cat, Jun Bei, Cole, and Dax, but it all gets resolved easily which is kind of annoying. Catarina even mentions potentially being in love with Cole, when they've known each other for less than a week I believe. Just not realistic. I think the romance took up too much time that could've been dedicated to the relationship between Lachlan and Catarina, because that seemed like an important aspect of the novel, especially with some of those plot twists.

The plot twists, by the way, were great. I saw a few reviews talking about "That Plot Twist" and wasn't sure which one it was because there were a lot, but once I figured out which one they were talking about I totally understood.

Spoiler

At first I thought the plot twist was that the Skies were sort of like the bad guys, because they kind of made Novak seem like a villain for a while, but learning that Cat is Jun Bei was the major plot twist. The others, like her surviving the decryption, and Lachlan not actually dying (the first time) were easy to detect.

I just felt like some of this stuff, especially the last 20% of the book, could have just been part of the next book.

Also, the narration was really weird. Many people mentioned the narrator having monotonous voices for all the characters, making it hard to figure out who was speaking (or in Cat's case, when she was speaking and when she was thinking) and also her mispronunciation of words. I get that she's British, but she's using an "American accent" - maybe use the pronunciation that Americans do? Another reviewer mentions the narrator's pronunciation of Leoben as "Loban" and that confused me a lot because Cole called him Lee throughout the novel and I had no idea why he was calling him Lee if his name was Loban (I assumed his name was something like Loban Lee or Lee Loban, but no it was Leoban) and this just really frustrated me for some reason.

Catarina also had this sort of complex were she felt that everything was her fault and she felt guilt for things that she didn't really need to be guilty about. That got old quick. The more I think about this book for my review the more I realize it wasn't really a favorite for me.
I'll likely continue with this series because I want to find out what happens next, but part of me is unsure of if I will read the next book because I was unhappy with the way things were handled in the book.