This book follows our main character Tod Hewitt who is the only boy in the town full of men. Ever since the settlers were infected by a germ, it not only killed the females in their area,  but also gives the settlers the ability to hear each other's thoughts. When a personal disaster occurs a month before Todd becomes a man, he is forced to leave his town with just his dog. That's where he finds a girl. The first female he's ever seen. But why is she there, and why hasn't she died with the germ like every other female?

I haven't had a "what the heck" feeling with a book in so long. But this book gives me exactly that.

Ending with a cliffhanger, theres so much to this book than I was expecting. And like the review on the cover says, it's so freaking hard to put down! 

I didn't intentionally want to read this, but stumbled across it while I was browsing my bookstore. I remembered that Tom Holland (whom I am very much so trash for) had just finished filming the Chaos Walking movie, which is based on this trilogy by Patrick Ness. I had no clue what it was about, but thought I'd pick it up and read it before the movie comes out anyways.

I'm so freaking happy I did.

This book is so addicting, and so well written that it's just so hard to be a responsible human being and not sit on your butt and binge read this book (which is exactly what I did lol).

I don't think I've actually read a Patrick Ness book prior to picking this up, but wow his writing is incredible. I love how it's so detailed, yet he doesn't give everything away at once. Like, you sit there questioning what this whole "Noise" situation is and slowly (but not too slow) you get little pieces of information throughout the book.

I also really liked how personal we get with the main character.

We get an inside view of Todd's thought process but also, the way it's written is very interesting. It doesn't necessarily feel like journal entries, but it feels like Todd, himself is writing the book which is really interesting. Some words aren't spelled correctly because Todd wasn't able to go to school, leaving him very minimal knowledge on how to read or write so I thought this concept was quite interesting. The only time I've ever seen this included in a novel was in Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and I loved this element in that book as well.

Viola, on the other hand, reminded me a lot of Eleven from Stranger Things for some reason. She's very smart, but selective with the knowledge she decides to deliver.

I also love the relationship development between the two characters and I want to protect them like they're my children.

I'm not really sure if I had any negative problems with this book, to be quite honest. Not saying that it was absolutely perfect and you won't find any flaws while reading it. But for myself, I was quite satisfied. Most of the time, I forgot I was reading and it felt like I was watching a movie through my head. The imagery in this novel is amazing to me.

I guess the only negative thing I can point out is that, at the beginning, I had a hard time keeping track of the characters. Like I couldn't remember who Aaron was until he becomes a prominent antagonist. I also noticed that at the beginning of the novel, a ton of random characters were thrown in with very broad backstories described but then never mentioned again. I'm not sure if they'll be in the next coming books, but if not, I find mentioning those characters useless.

My all time favourite thing about this novel, was how they added a dog as a main character. And because he and all the other animals were affected by the Noise, you can hear everything they say. Manchee, Todd's dog was my absolute favourite character. He ends up being killed by Aaron near the book and that is a death I will never get over.

The ending is what solidified my love for this book. With every book, you expect the end to resolve everything and have a happily ever after element. But not this one. We're stuck with a cliffhanger where Viola ends up getting shot and we're not sure whether or not she'll live.

I mean, I feel like she will (I'm being hopeful - another "happily ever after feeling") but it gives you that feeling where, you'd definitely have to read the next book to be sure.

I absolutely loved this book. It gave me the same nostalgic element that The 5th Wave gave me when I read it, around the time when I first joined the book community. I haven't read much dystopian since then, but I love how theres a lot of similarities between the two.

What's a book that gives you nostalgia? Let me know in the comments below or on my Instagram! I'd love to hear your thoughts.