Hello everyone!!!! Isabelle Knight back here again with another book review!!!!! Hoorah!!! 🙂 First off, major thanks to Carol Baldwin for providing the review copy of this fantabulous book – thank you ever so much! You’re the best! Anyway, the book I’m going to be reviewing today is actually a book in a genre I absolutely LOVE but sadly don’t get to read much of. And this is probably going to seem like an odd genre for me to like, but I absolutely LOVE this genre!!!!! YA dystopian/sci-fi!!!!
🙂 I know I’ve said that middle-grade fantasy and action/adventure and contemporary novels are my favorite, but for some reason, I also have a soft spot for young adult dystopian, and I am a HUGE fan of The Hunger Games and The Undertow Trilogy!!!! Which was why I was super excited to get a review copy of this fantastic book – Disconnected by Riley Cross, which is a YA dystopian/science fiction, and it is SO GOOD!!!!
The worldbuilding was fantastic, the characters were so much fun to read with their own very vivid personalities, and I really loved following them on this adventure and uncovering all these secrets!
So, Disconnected is, as I’ve said, a young adult dystopian/science fiction that follows a girl named Chiara, who was born a ‘mistake’ – an Anomaly, and she struggles to fit in in Unity’s genetically engineered social system. And when her parents and her grandfather are killed in a strange series of accidents, she’s basically left with fragmented memories that suggest the deaths were no accident. Only her robot dog, Kaynine, knows what really happened, except its memory files were corrupted. And the whole book really follows Chiara’s journey as she risks almost everything to find the truth about what really happened and what is really going on in this society – and there is a lot happening, including a Forbidden (virtual) Library!!
I absolutely love this book!!! It is definitely one of my favorite young adult dystopian/sci-fi books of all time, and it was impossible to put down!!! The plot is so thrilling and nearly every scene had me hooked, and I was just as desperate as Chiara was to find out what’s really going on in this book!
The characters were amazing with their own unique personality, and I have to say, my favorite character is undoubtedly Chiara – I really felt for her as she tried to search for the truth, especially with all her fragmented memories, and there was just something about her character that made me really invested in her and made me really want to know what happened! I also really like Kaynine, the robot dog companion, because I always have a soft spot for any animal companions!! Even if they’re robots! (Those still count as animal companions!!!!) I would say that I also like Mother Lotus… I mean, not because she’s the ‘most good and virtuous character in the world’ but there’s just something eerie about her that just really made me intrigued… Something both eerie and creepy… And part of me was just a bit attached to that… 😆
To be honest, Mother Lotus reminds me a bit of Auntie, who is a very very VERY eerie character from my book!
The setting was so incredibly detailed, and I could really see how carefully crafted this world and this whole society was!!! Riley Cross does an incredible job of really laying out the world in a way that feels so real and detailed without having to info dump, and the way she really manages to bit by bit peel back the layers of secrets!!!! The way it’s really crafted, especially with all its functions (e.g. Fifth Function, Fourth Function, Third Function, you get the idea) just made it feel so real!!
I really loved exploring this world, and I especially loved the parts where I discovered that, well… I won’t give spoilers, but let’s just say that there’s more to it than meets the eye, and not everything the characters have been told is entirely true….
I also really loved Riley Cross’s writing! It really dragged me straight into the world of this book, and it really got me invested in the main character and in the world!! It was so vivid and detailed without info dumping or being way too over the top, and again, I just loved the way she managed to peel back all the layers of secrets!!! The pacing was great, and it felt like I was right there beside Chiara!
My favorite part of the story is probably the first part of the novel. Which I know is weird, but I really loved getting a look into what Chiara’s daily life was like before all the action started, and I feel like there are some books that don’t really give you a look into the MC’s life before the inciting incident happened, so that was definitely great to see! Because the author does show you Chiara’s daily life, and yet it never drags and there’s always something happening and some odd incident that’s really hinting at all the secrets that are going to come!!!
But yeah!! Overall, I really, really loved this book, and it was such a great read – especially since I love YA dystopian and don’t get to read it much. And, fun fact, today is actually Disconnected’s book birthday!!!! At least from what I can tell on Goodreads, it was published on May 10th, 2023!!! So happy birthday, Disconnected!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🎉🎉🎈🎈🎊🎊🥳🥳🥳
I definitely really recommend this book for any teen ages 13 and up, especially to fans of young adult dystopian books who might also be looking for a science fiction setting!!! It’s a fantastic book that will undoubtedly have you invested in Chiara’s journey to the very end!!! 🙂
So yeah! I guess this wraps up my review of Disconnected! Thank you guys so much for coming, I hope you enjoyed this review, and I definitely hope you’ll grab a copy of this wonderful book!!!! Until next time!!!
Isabelle
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