Unwind: A Book Review

Book: Unwind (Unwind dystology #1)

Author/Authoress: Neal Shusterman

Unwind (Unwind, #1)

Cover: 4/5




Yes the plot is actually as creepy as it sounds.



“I’d rather be partly great than entirely useless.”




Characters: 5/5










Ending: 5/5





Overall Rating: 5/5



Hate List: A Book Review

People hate. That’s our reality.

Book: Hate List

Author/Authoress: Jennifer Brown

Hate List

Cover: 4/5




















Overall Rating:5/5


One thing that I really love about young adult fiction is the huge variety of female characters we get here. Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games, Tris Prior from Divergent, Tally Youngblood from the Uglies… the list goes on. The truth is that young adult novel’s are way ahead of the curve in terms of the Bechdel’s test  (a test in which the main requirement is that in a piece of fictional work ,two named female characters talk about something other than men) as compared to adult fiction or movies. In young adult there are no (or very few) token female characters. You know what I mean by token female characters. This pretty girls  who hang around looking awkward and probably feeling awkward because they have no real role. Movie directors hire them to prove a point. They hire them so they can say something like : “What do you mean we discriminate between genders. Jane (or Elizabeth or Lind or any female name can be inserted here) here has a role in the movie.” But the awesome thing about young adult novels is that the female characters do actually have a role


But that’s not saying that they’re perfect. Sometimes even in young adult novels, it seems like the author is trying too hard. She’s pretty, she fights, she has badass weapon skills, she’s the face of a rebellion, she’s definitely as good as a boy. In the process they stamp out all of the other female traits. The girls are not allowed to like dresses (unless they’re sidekicks) or hair or makeup. I’m not saying that all girls love fancy dresses, makeup and messing with their hair but sometimes it seems like author’s are trying way too hard to make it clear that their main character is above all that shallow frivolousness. But seriously if James Bond can take a break and have his masculine  ‘martini shaken, not stirred’ then why can’t a female character enjoy something feminine without criticism.

Another pet peeve (for me) is the fact that the best compliment a female character in a young adult novel is strong. If someone’s asked to describe Katniss they’ll probably use the word strong. If someone has to describe Tris, they’ll use the word strong. When it comes to describing female characters, why has everyone’s vocabulary suddenly become so limited? More importantly, when we describe male characters why do we never use the word strong. Take Sherlock Holmes. He’s arguably  the most complex and interesting fictional character. Is he strong? Not physically;that’s what sidekicks like Watson are for. But Sherlock Holmes doesn’t need to be strong. What we remember him most for is him mental acumen, his cleverness and observational skills. And for his witty dialogue, of course. He’s like an onion. Layered and good enough to make you cry. On the other hand. take Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. Again, she’s arguably the best female fictional character. But I guarantee that if you look at any character sketch of Elizabeth Bennet, you’ll find the word strong somewhere in there. And is she strong? Yeah, I guess she is . But that’s not the point here. The point is male characters don’t need to be strong. We automatically assume they are. Female characters on the other hand go around doing crazy things like  picking fights for the sake of it, ticking off  their loved one, throwing punches to prove that they are ‘just as good as the boys’. Why is having anger management issues automatically assumed to be equal to being ‘strong’ for female characters?  The whole point is that just because they are female, characters shouldn’t have to prove that they are strong! Take a look at Sophia McDougal’s article I hate strong female characters. She’s written the same idea pretty beautifully.

So while having angry, badass female characters who replace their emotions with weapons is better than having weepy, damsels in distress who wait for Prince Charming to come and save them, it’s not ideal. We need more realistic, holistic female characters. Ones who don’t have the pressure of being strong thrust on them but still don’t let that be an excuse to be weak themselves.

The Darkest Minds:A Book Revew

Book: The Darkest Minds

Author/Authors: Alexandra Bracken

The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds, #1)


There was nothing wrong with the cover …. But nothing really made it stand out (you would think that the orange on the cover would be like a flashing beacon, but no it actually isn’t). Combined with the fact that Disney was the publisher (I’m not really a Disney princess fan; not when they messed up the fairytales so much) , this book really didn’t look so appealing. So, I passed it up for a long time despite its good rating for other books with better covers (but inferior content). Moral of the story for publishers: Readers judge books by their covers. Moral of the story for readers: Trust your fellow readers and goodreads.com; seriously, they rarely guide you wrong.



The plot in this book deserves more than 5 stars. It was attention grabbing and I’ve definitely never seen something like this before in this genre. If any such book exists, it’s a cheap knockoff (even if that book was written earlier)


The characters in this book were amazing. From Ruby, the main character to Chubs (I guess his designation is the sidekick but he was too smart for me to think of him as one) to Zu, the adorable little girl who was mentally traumatized enough into not speaking. Most books have one character (if they’re lucky) who stands out. But the awesome thing about this book is that there are many such characters.

Ruby: Ruby starts off at the beginning of the book knowing almost nothing about the world she lives in. But she has a good reason for this. Ever since she turned 10, she’s been stuck in a rehabilitiation camp (the concentration variety) because the adults are scared of her awesome super powers. So far this sounds like the plot to a cheesy comic, right? Wrong. Let’s just drive the stakes a little bit higher. Majority of the children in America had succumbed to a mysterious illness and died. The rest…developed super powers. Naturally everyone was scared. So they stuck their kids in camps which were designed to make the powers go away. That’s one brilliant thing about this book: The government and adults acted almost exactly like you would expect them to act in such a situation. However because this is dystopian fiction, the camps are horrible. The children in them are mistreated- the most dangerous ones are killed, the rest are treated brutally, not allowed to talk, forced to do hard menial labour, etc. Disturbingly,there are several parallels between the ‘rehabilitation camps’ and the Jewish concentration camps set up in Nazi Germany during WWII. But this really didn’t set in for me until Ruby tells us how her mom had told she would be allowed to shave when she was 12 but she didn’t actually do so until she was almost 16. In this book, Ruby is special because she is one of the last ‘oranges’ (that’s a code name for her power level and basically means she can mess with people’s minds- literally! ) and also dangerous for that reason. But here’s the catch: She has no idea to control her powers. Right from the beginning we can see how much her powers scare her. With one touch, she erased her best friends memory. <spoiler> somewhere in the middle we learn that she also erased her parent’s memory and in the end she erases Liam’s memory.<okay, relax spoiler’s over>. Ruby’s a good character. She’s nice without being too sugary. Scared enough without being a total coward. Powerful but not invincible and awkward enough without being cringe-worthy.

Liam: If Ruby’s a good character, than Liam is an even better one. Having come from a less notorious camp, he’s less troubled than Ruby and much nicer, sweeter and more naive for it. Liam is the kind of guy who has an actual personality. As soon as he meets her, Liam is all for travelling with Ruby. However this is not because of some twisted love-at-first-sight thing (thank god!) but more a reflection of his personality. He’s not the type of love interest whose life would revolve around his love for the MC. Ahem, Malcahi from Sanctum, I’m looking at you. No, Liam had much more going for him such as his need to help others and his  loyalty to his friend. Definitely a swoon-worthy romantic love interest.

Zu: It’s hard to learn about a character who doesn’t talk. I mean, can’t talk. Although no one ever says what, it’s implied that Zu was tortured and tested upon in the camp and was so affected she stopped speaking. Despite the fact that she doesn’t talk, it wasn’t exactly hard to learn about her. She’s a yellow (that means she can make stuff explode) but more importantly, she’s a loving little girl who’s interested in dressing up, needs a serious dose of self-confidence and fiercely loyal to her family (whether they’re related to her by blood or just bound together by necessity).

Chubs: Chubs is a character I really enjoyed. Annoyingly assured his intelligence was superior, a little bit (okay, actually a lot) distrustful and insecure- he’s the type of character who grows on you. And he didn’t just grow on me as a reader, he grew on Ruby too. As he came to trust her more, they had surprisingly insightful and profound discussions.

Clancy: This is a character who oozes charisma (not surprising, since he is the President’s son). At first I was kind of annoyed with him for appearing because I really didn’t want a love triangle. But there’s a lot going on underneath the polished and charming exterior of this boy. I guess you could call him the villain of the piece but I was never really able to muster up any real hatred for this character (By the way, Ruby wasn’t able to either). Sure he was petty, arrogant and jealous with a strong cruel streak. But that somehow added to his charm (believe me, I know how messed up that sounds) but somehow he managed to make it all up with a short letter to Ruby.


I lied. I would have run.



Romance: 5/5

The romance in this book was surprisingly good. It wasn’t too heavy, neither was it too light. It didn’t hurt that the characters involved in it were so brilliant either.

Plotholes: 4/5

 This book was surprisingly realistic. I mean if a virus such as IANN did exist I could imagine the world (or at least America) going to Hell in a handbasket like this. Of course there were some unhealthy messages in here. For example, Ruby’s whole relationship with Clancy but the book made it clear that the relationship was unhealthy.

Overall Rating: 5/5

No, I’m not surprised I gave this book a five star rating and you shouldn’t be either. It was amazing, I promise you and totally deserves this rating. Buy this books as soon as possible so that you can read it over and over and over again.