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A review by allymuddyorbs
XVI by Julia Karr
5.0
Throughout almost the entire novel, I really disliked Sandy and her "it's all about me/sex-teen" attitude. All she ever did was flirt with boys and tell Nina off because she got the things Sandy wanted without even trying. But in the end, I still felt bad for her because she was murdered and buried haphazardly by Ed. The point of view the book was written in really made it easy to feel for the characters, especially Nina and her loss for her dear friend was definitely felt even if I read it in the backseat of a car with really poor lighting. I personally couldn't imagine if it had been my own best friend whose body had been found. I probably wouldn't have been as composed as Nina was.
Another character I didn't particularly like was Dee. I guess I could chalk some of it off to the fact that I was reading from Nina's point of view and that her thoughts on Dee's innocence were what caused me to dislike her. But also because most of the time she was a brat. She deliberately goes against the things her elders say and have people constantly worrying about where she was and always wanting to talk to Ed because she believed that he was a good guy despite her prior doubts to him hurting her mother. I guess there was also fault on Nina's part because she didn't tell her that Ed had killed Ginnie and that Ed wasn't her real father in the first place.
On a brighter note, I absolutely fell in love with the love story of Sal and Nina because her doubts on his feelings for her were similar if not identical to what people my age feel these days. The girls like me fall for guys like Sal and then girls like Sandy and the blonde girl he was with in the hallway rub their stuff all over those guys and - unlike Sal - they lose interest in us. I absolutely jumped with joy when Sal began to show Nina how he truly felt. And some of their alone time was hot, even if they weren't even de-trousered.
Another great aspect of the story was Nina's friendship with Wei. It was the kind of friendship that developed quickly, but could withstand anything and everything that threatened it. It was something that I could also relate to because it resembled the kind of relationship I have now with my friends. The fact that Wei would risk a lot just to protect Nina who just came into her life a few months prior to their friendship was something very much present in my life as well, and it was refreshing to know that my best friend and I didn't really look strange and out of the ordinary because there were actually people who did that for one another. Oh, and I also loved the thistle tattoo on Wei's XVI mark.
After reading this book, one of the things I was truly glad for was that it's not 2150. Julia Karr was right when she wrote that 1984 used to just be fiction until it actually came true in the 80s. I read the book and it was eerie how those predictions became true. And it wasn't impossible that the theories presented in this novel might come true within the next hundred years. The society's slowly being filled with media sheep - more and more so by the day. Magazines full of products that are supposed to make you look younger and reports on other people's lives delivered as if they were factual. I have family under the media's scrutinizing microscope and I would give anything and everything just to be able to pull them out and protect them from the harshness of society, but I can't.
Come to think of it, most of the elements presented in the book are actually stronger and more prominent versions of what our society has these days. So it really is probable that one day, probably when we're all living in the lives of our reincarnations, this could really happen. Because this is where our world's headed.
This book is really underrated when in fact it should be known amongst everyone in today's generation for its message on staying true to yourself and never giving in to the brainwashing of the media no matter how tempting it looks. But of course even if it did sell big, it would never be promoted the way The Twilight Saga and Harry Potter books are promoted mainly because this is a dystopia story that tells its readers the true colors of the world. If we were in the novel, they would probably take this off the shelves because it tells us to fight, and tells us to never stop searching for the truth; that nothing is how it seems.
I'm really looking forward to Truth, and it's going to be painful knowing that I have about five months of waiting left before it's released. But I agree with one of the reviewers of the cover that it could have done loads better without the cheesy tagline. (I was talking about Truth, not XVI. I loved the tagline of XVI)
Another character I didn't particularly like was Dee. I guess I could chalk some of it off to the fact that I was reading from Nina's point of view and that her thoughts on Dee's innocence were what caused me to dislike her. But also because most of the time she was a brat. She deliberately goes against the things her elders say and have people constantly worrying about where she was and always wanting to talk to Ed because she believed that he was a good guy despite her prior doubts to him hurting her mother. I guess there was also fault on Nina's part because she didn't tell her that Ed had killed Ginnie and that Ed wasn't her real father in the first place.
On a brighter note, I absolutely fell in love with the love story of Sal and Nina because her doubts on his feelings for her were similar if not identical to what people my age feel these days. The girls like me fall for guys like Sal and then girls like Sandy and the blonde girl he was with in the hallway rub their stuff all over those guys and - unlike Sal - they lose interest in us. I absolutely jumped with joy when Sal began to show Nina how he truly felt. And some of their alone time was hot, even if they weren't even de-trousered.
Another great aspect of the story was Nina's friendship with Wei. It was the kind of friendship that developed quickly, but could withstand anything and everything that threatened it. It was something that I could also relate to because it resembled the kind of relationship I have now with my friends. The fact that Wei would risk a lot just to protect Nina who just came into her life a few months prior to their friendship was something very much present in my life as well, and it was refreshing to know that my best friend and I didn't really look strange and out of the ordinary because there were actually people who did that for one another. Oh, and I also loved the thistle tattoo on Wei's XVI mark.
After reading this book, one of the things I was truly glad for was that it's not 2150. Julia Karr was right when she wrote that 1984 used to just be fiction until it actually came true in the 80s. I read the book and it was eerie how those predictions became true. And it wasn't impossible that the theories presented in this novel might come true within the next hundred years. The society's slowly being filled with media sheep - more and more so by the day. Magazines full of products that are supposed to make you look younger and reports on other people's lives delivered as if they were factual. I have family under the media's scrutinizing microscope and I would give anything and everything just to be able to pull them out and protect them from the harshness of society, but I can't.
Come to think of it, most of the elements presented in the book are actually stronger and more prominent versions of what our society has these days. So it really is probable that one day, probably when we're all living in the lives of our reincarnations, this could really happen. Because this is where our world's headed.
This book is really underrated when in fact it should be known amongst everyone in today's generation for its message on staying true to yourself and never giving in to the brainwashing of the media no matter how tempting it looks. But of course even if it did sell big, it would never be promoted the way The Twilight Saga and Harry Potter books are promoted mainly because this is a dystopia story that tells its readers the true colors of the world. If we were in the novel, they would probably take this off the shelves because it tells us to fight, and tells us to never stop searching for the truth; that nothing is how it seems.
I'm really looking forward to Truth, and it's going to be painful knowing that I have about five months of waiting left before it's released. But I agree with one of the reviewers of the cover that it could have done loads better without the cheesy tagline. (I was talking about Truth, not XVI. I loved the tagline of XVI)