A review by heathermjackson
UnWholly by Neal Shusterman

5.0

Wow. I really enjoyed Unwind, so I picked up the next book in the series. I was surprised to read the author's note in the beginning where he explains that he hadn't intended to make Unwind a series. The first book does stand alone. Though, since he created such an interesting world ripe for more stories, for reasons he didn't get into (reader requests? publisher wishes? his own ideas?), he decided to write another book, and UnWholly was born.

Usually, I start these reviews with The Good and end with The Bad, but I'm gonna switch these two things and end on a high note, like this book deserves!

The Bad

... or more accurately this should be called the I'm-not-sure-this-is-going-to-work section of the book. So, the first half of UnWholly has A LOT of characters. Like a whole TV series worth of characters. And that's what it felt like I was reading - not a novel that follows one, two or three main characters, but a TV show that follows a dozen! Plus many dozens of smaller parts. And the plots are completely separate at the beginning. I had faith that Shusterman would bring them together, but it seemed to be taking a while. Also, it's not like the POV switched every chapter. We would spend many chapters with Lev, and then go back to Risa, and back to Connor, and then all the others like Starkey, Nelson, Cam, etc, etc, etc. Sometimes we'd be gone from the Graveyard for so long I'd almost forget about them, and then we'd be back. Or we'd follow Lev for so long that I'd wonder what the heck was happening with Risa. However...

The Good. No, the Excellent!

... at no point was I ever bored. Ever. Despite the many non-intersecting plots taking place, I loved them all. And I never got confused. And in the second half of the book when the plots started coming together in this absolutely brilliant narrative spiderweb, I could not stop reading! And that ending. The painful, the heart-breaking, the heart-warming, the scary, the hopeful - LOVED IT! I rarely feel so satisfied with an ending, yet completely excited for the next book. This is all to say that UnWholly perfectly wraps up the many, many plots of all its characters, but also sets up their new quests for the next book.

In Conclusion

I'm not even going to bother borrowing the rest of these books from the library to see if I like them (like I usually do). I'm just going to buy the whole Unwind series!