The Darkest Minds [The Darkest Minds, #1] by Alexandra Bracken

The Darkest Minds [The Darkest Minds, #1]
by Alexandra Bracken

Genre: YA dystopian

My Rating: ★★

Description:

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something had changed. Something that scared her parents so much that they locked her in the garage and called the police. Something that got her locked up in Thurmond, a government camp for children who survived the brutal disease ravaging the nation and gained something new -- something dangerous.
Ruby is one of the dangerous ones. Now, six years later, she tries to stay under the radar, knowing that if the camp authorities discover what she really can do, she's sentencing herself to something far worse than Thurmond.
But when her abilities are revealed, she's forced to flee for her life. On the run, she meets a group of kids also fleeing from the authorities, and joins in their quest to find the last safe place for kids like them -- East River.

Overall Thoughts

I'd heard so many raving reviews for The Darkest Minds that I was almost sure it was going to be one of my new favorite books. Sadly, that wasn't the case. While I didn't hate the book, I didn't love it, either -- I don't feel like it deserved all the hype that it got. 

Let me explain why.

The Characters

The characters were okay. I never really got attached to Ruby (mostly because of the motivation issues I talked about), but I did like her backstory, and the reveal was well done. I liked the little girl, Suzume, a lot, and I liked the friendships between the other characters (Suzume, Chubs, and Liam). Liam was not exactly your typical YA dystopian love interest, which I also really appreciated. 

However, like I mentioned before, there were too many different villains, and it felt kind of silly at times because of this. I feel that if the author had stuck to one or two different villains -- and maybe made them actually be different in some way -- it would have been better. 

Plot/Pacing

This book had no real plot. The overarching goal is to "find East River", but Ruby, the protagonist, isn't fully on board with that goal. She goes along with the others anyway, but for a good portion of the book, finding East River isn't even a top priority for her. When she finally does decide she wants to go there, her motivations are rather shaky. I didn't really see enough of the drive behind her motivations to really "get" her story. 

There was a lot of action -- but much of it felt contrived. There were a bunch of different people chasing them, and so there were a lot of different chase scenes, as well as scenes where they would be cornered by the people hunting them. But there were so many villains chasing them it was almost laughable. One of the three villains literally has no purpose to the plot apart from chasing Ruby and the others down.

Writing/Worldbuilding

Now, this review is making it sound like I hated the book, and that's not true. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it, either. So now, I'm going to talk about the things I really enjoyed about this book. 

1) The first three or so chapters. These chapters are basically backstory -- and I loved it. The first line of chapter one hooked me right away, and the sense of urgency and tension in these early chapters was really well done. I also liked the one character who featured in the backstory, Sam. She was great. 

2) The world building. I liked the whole idea of kids getting different powers, and how everyone was scared of them. I liked how they were divided into five different classes of powers, and that the abilities weren't totally random, but had to be from one of the specific categories. I thought that Ruby might have some totally random power when I first started reading, but luckily that didn't turn out to be true!

3) The end. I could not have predicted that ending, and I think it was a really good way to end the book (it was actually what made me give this book the extra .25 stars.)

So, while this novel wasn't everything it was cracked up to be, it was decent. I'll try to read the sequel, to see if the author improves at writing story goals and motivations for Ruby, but it's not insanely high on my TBR at the moment. Whenever my hold on Overdrive goes through -- that's when I'll read it. 

Content

Recommended for ages 15 and up.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Suicide, attempted sexual assault.

Swearing is fairly infrequent, but does include very strong language, especially towards the climax of the book.
Sexual content includes kissing, mentions of boys being attracted to Ruby (in a sexual way; this is clearly shown as being wrong), a boy touches Ruby inappropriately even after she's made it clear she doesn't want him to, an attempted sexual assault.
Violence is common and sometimes disturbing. Certain characters can influence other characters to do some horrible things, including at least one count of suicide (on page). Characters, including children are shot and killed. Descriptions of blood. A car explodes, causing a death.