The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken Book Review

Title: The Darkest Minds
Author: Alexandra Bracken
Series: The Darkest Minds #1
Genre:  Young Adult
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Pub Date: December 18, 2012
Pages: 496
My Copy: ARC that I got at NYC Comic Con

Book Synopsis:

When Ruby wakes up on her tenth birthday, something about her has changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp”. She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.

Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her-East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.

Book Review:

An interesting YA book. I was drawn to this book because of the blurb and it sounded like something that I would enjoy. I found this book to be interesting for me. On one side of this book, I felt that it was very fast and action packed. The other side of me didn’t really connect with the main character of Ruby, but I liked the other characters so much more.

Ruby as a main character seems interesting, but I found her to be very selfish and self centered. Yet the other characters like Zu, Chubs, Liam and Clancy were more interesting than her. I kind of thought that Ruby was selfish and only seem to care about herself. Yet as I was reading this book, the action was so fast and coming at you, it distracted from how annoying she was.

I also didn’t like the fact that Ruby didn’t think about her actions or how her decisions affected others, until she loses someone she cares about. I mean it was a very dramatic book at times…yet some of the plot points seemed a little far stretched to me as well. It was like the main character feels bad and everything, but I couldn’t relate to Ruby as a character.

In some ways, when I can’t relate or feel anything for a main character it makes me not like the book. I really want to like books. The story was very action paced and I felt at times that it seemed like there wasn’t that much character development. We were running, and running, and I felt that it very much exhausted me as I was reading it.

The subplots were interesting and would have liked to have seen more of them developed and when a certain character died, it broke my heart, especially since it seemed like this characters was going somewhere interesting. Then this character died and so many things could have happened.

I found that this book was just okay. The main character got on my nerves and that is never an appealing aspect of a book, but the action was good. So this was just an okay book for me. The powers that these characters seem to have wasn’t really explained and that bothered me as well.

Rating: