The Darkest Minds

(4 / 5)

WOW! Great book! 4 Stars!!

Don’t know why I had never heard of this one before I began browsing on goodreads. It feels like it should be up in the popularity stakes with The Hunger Games or the Divergent series.

So, basic synopsis… The world goes a bit to crap when the majority of children start developing these psychic powers. The children are gradually taken away to camps, some escape and form gangs, and others are, well – killed…
The story is seen through Ruby’s eyes. A 16 year old girl who has been living in a camp for 6 years or so, after she developed her powers. In the camps there are different colours which represent the different type of powers that the children possess. For example the yellow kids can manipulate electricity, the blue kids can move things with their minds, and the orange and red kids, well lets just say they can do a lot more…
Ruby (classed as a green) manages to escape and meets up with a small group of kids of all different colours, and they have many dangerous adventures.

Firstly, The Darkest Minds was SO WELL WRITTEN!!! The synopsis itself made me want to potentially skip this book, special powers, teenagers… Not exactly what I like to read… But I am so glad I did! Alexandra Bracken has some talent! Great characters and character development! Extremely original story despite the not so original, basic plot… Loved the twists and turns! Intricately weaved together. Thought it was fantastic!

The characters were great. As I said I generally don’t really go for these young adult fantasy/sci fi/dystopian books, because the characters annoy the crap out of me. But the characters in this were so well imagined! Ruby, our damaged heroine was extremely likeable. Liam the handsome love interest, also somewhat damaged, was easy to route for. Chubs, the brainy, grumpy tag along was my favourite character. Loved to hate him, and then loved to like him…

Loads of excitement, adventure, action and violence!

The only thing I didn’t like about this book, was the typical 16 year old romance “How am I going to live without you?” crap that every YA book seems to be reeking with. But, I remember what it was like to be 16, and I suppose things were very much life and death back then when it came to love… And that was without it actually BEING life or death due to people chasing you and hunting you, and wanting to kill you… Still, that’s where my deduction of a star goes. If I was a teenager things would be different, I would be able to relate more and I probably would have rated it a solid 5.

Overall, read it! Its a great way to waste away a few hours and it stays with you in the background for a while after! Thoroughly enjoyed it and I will absolutely be reading the sequels.

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