The Line: Review (and a blog award!)

The spectacular Elle from Media Molly gave me this award for Lovely Blog! My first blog award, ever. So exciting :) I believe I'm supposed to pass on the award, so I'll give it to two of my favorite blogs - Creepy Query Girl and Badass Bookie. Go visit and follow them if you aren't already!

Now, onto the book-butchering! I mean, book-reviewing. Heh... heh... *shifty eyes*

Synopsis: Rachel lives with her mother on The Property. The good thing about living there is that it's far from the city, where the oppressive government is mos ...more Rachel lives with her mother on The Property. The good thing about living there is that it's far from the city, where the oppressive government is most active. The bad thing, at least to most people, is that it's close to the Line - an uncrossable section of the National Border Defense System, an invisible barrier that encloses the entire country.

She can see the Line from the greenhouse windows, but she is forbidden to go near it. Across the Line is Away, and though Rachel has heard many whispers about the dangers there, she's never really believed the stories. Until the day she hears a recording that could only have come from across the Line.

It's a voice asking for help.

Who sent the message? What is her mother hiding? And to what lengths will Rachel go in order to do what she thinks is right? 


Details: The Line by Teri Hall, 219 pages, 3.46 stars on Goodreads


My Thoughts: I wasn't as satisfied with this book as I thought it was. To be fair, I read this after about six hundred other dystopians, so I was getting a little sick of the genre (or sub-genre? what's it called?) anyway. As in, I had to go on a huge contemporary binge after finishing this book. So I'm going to start with all the things I liked about the book.


The style. The style was a big, big plus. It had this whole fairy-tale thing going on, with the third person and sort of distant narration. At that same time, it was a little creepy, too, like how you knew from the very beginning that this wasn't going to be a happy-sappy fairy tale. Although, come to think of it, most fairy tales are creepy. Anyway.


The characters were also spectacular. Each one was deep and had a lot of layers, especially Ms. Moore - she was by far my favorite character. The Line is the first book in a series, so I expect there will be a lot of character growth from Rachel, and that will be interesting to see.


For the things I didn't like, world building is probably the first one on the list. I personally didn't find the concept to be very original or shocking or thought-provoking. Basically, the government really sucks. And they made a line. And there are people trapped on the other side of the line. And Rachel decides to cross the line. (These aren't spoilers, by the way, don't worry!) What I really didn't like was that all this information was dumped on us through numerous pop quizzes. There has to be a better way the author could have conveyed what happened.


I didn't like the ending so much, either. I mean, the cliffhanger was okay, but this book was really short, so I don't see why, for example, the second and first book could be combined. Or even the third with the second with the first. The ending of The Line felt unnatural - the beginning was a little slow and there was a lot of building up, and just when something exciting finally happens, it ends.


All in all, this was an enjoyable read and definitely worth it if you're a huge fan of dystopians. If you're not into them so much - well, I wouldn't keep it at the top of the TBR list. 3 smilies out of 5.