Book Review #768 - The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1) by Alexandra Bracken

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something frightening enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that got her sent to Thurmond, a government 'rehabilitation camp'. Ruby might have survived the mysterious disease that killed most of America's children, but she and the others had emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they could not control.

Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones. When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now on the run, she is desperate to find East River, the only safe haven left for kids like her, and she joins a group of other runaways who have escaped their own camps. Liam, their brave leader, is falling for Ruby, but she can't risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents. When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all Liam. But there are also other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice - and one that may mean giving up her only chance at having a life worth living.

My Rating: 4/5

This is a series that I have been meaning to read for years and with the film adaptation released this year I finally managed to read it.

I thought this book was going to be a dystopian so I was surprised to find it was more science fiction. This made it more unique than Divergent or The Hunger Games - books I had been expecting this book to be similar to.

I read Alexandra Bracken's other book Passenger and I found her writing style very hard to read but I found the complete opposite with this book.

I really enjoyed the world building and the fact that even though it took its time setting all this up, it never once felt slow paced or boring. 

I also loved the amount of music references that were slipped in there. There was surprisingly quite a lot.

There was so much action and plot development in the second half of the book that I found it hard to grasp that this is only the first book in the series.

As soon as I finished this book I immediately bought the boxset so look out for my reviews of the rest of this series.