Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris: Review





RATING: 5/5

 

I had no interest in reading this book at first. The cover was weird and I had too many other books I wanted to read. So I didn't read it.

Then I won an ARC of UNBREAKABLE, the second book in the series. Now I had to read UNRAVELING or else I wouldn't be able to read UNBREAKABLE.

I went to the library and checked out UNRAVELING and let it sit for about a month. The due date was rapidly approaching, and I couldn't renew it again. So I finally sat down and started to read it.

I'm so glad I did.

UNRAVELING was not your typical YA novel. It had a perfect balance of action, intrigue, suspense, and romance. Not a lot of YA novels today can say that.

The thing I liked best about this book was the characters. Janelle was a strong heroine, Alex was a great sidekick, and Jared provided comic relief. But the best out of all of these is Ben, Janelle's love interest. He is kind, caring, smart, and adorable. He seemed a little stalkerish in the beginning, but he turned out to be one of the best love interests in YA.

And the best thing about the romance is: no insta-love! Ben loved Janelle from the start, but it took Janelle a while to even notice Ben. She had to die before she even talked to him. But even after Ben brought her back to life, she isn't all "Oh, I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, even though I've only known you for 5 minutes." She's just intrigued by him. It takes a while for the romance to develop, but it's so refreshing to read a book that doesn't have insta-love!

But the romance takes a back seat to everything else. The main focus of this book is the mystery revolving around the people who show up out of nowhere with radiation burns. No one knows how they get there, or where they come from. Janelle and her best friend Alex make it their priority to solve this mystery. It does help too, that Janelle's father is an FBI agent and has all of the records of these mysterious people on file. It makes for a great mystery, and really moves the book along.

The ending was full of so many twists and turns, I never saw it coming! But it was perfect. It was satisfying, but set up UNBREAKABLE perfectly.

Overall, a fabulous book. I highly recommend it!