My Review
This book, like the first book in the series, is really difficult for me to review. I guess that it doesn’t help that I read it months ago, and then kind of got distracted by tons of other things (like life), and completely forgot about it until I was going through my Goodreads shelf to look at the books I haven’t reviewed yet.
Before you read Alight, you really have to read Alive…otherwise, you’re not going to have the slightest idea what’s going on. If you want, you can read my review for Alive here, but it’s pretty vague so as not to contain any spoilers that will ruin the mystery around the book, so it might not be of much help! That being said…if you haven’t read the first book yet and you want to…you definitely should. It’s been an entertaining series so far, especially for science fiction fans.
I’m going to start off this review by telling you right now…this book is really hard to summarize. I’m trying to write a review for it that, like my review for the first book in the series, won’t give anything away so that it is still a surprise for readers. Also, I had a difficult time even rating this one, because while it was good, it seemed to lack just a tiny bit of realism that would have made me fall completely in love with it. The story was great, and it picked up right where Alive left off. Sometimes series end up taking a year or two in between where the first book ends and the next book picks up, and I always hate when that happens. The character development was superb…I really found myself being even more drawn to the characters in Alight than the first book in the series. It might have had something to do with the fact that for the most part, we do kind of know what is going on now, as in the first book we had absolutely no idea until the very end.
This book picks up back in the lives of the Birthday Children, and once again they find themselves in a different location with no idea what is going on around them. They do know why they are at their present location now, and they must work together harmoniously in order to survive, because food is scarce and there are new obstacles that are putting a bit of a dampening on that survival. Relationships are explored, and new things come to light about each of the Birthday Children, which causes some intense reactions between them all. Some favorite characters, such as Em and Bishop, are back, as well, and watching their story continue to unfold in this second book was a wonderful treat.
I rated this book a bit higher than the last one, because in my opinion, this one was a lot better than the previous novel. I loved having an idea of what was going on and how the story moved forward at a great pace…instead of having dips in interesting moments in this book, it was pretty decently paced and interesting the entire way through. A lot of books in a trilogy tend to have that second book in the series take a dip in pacing while the first book and third books are packed full of action, but that definitely isn’t the case here. This one is just as full of surprises as the first book, and even more entertaining.
I’ll definitely be sticking around to see how the trilogy concludes!
