RITA Reader Challenge Review

Plus One by Elizabeth Fama

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Celia. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the YA Romance category.

The summary:

It takes guts to deliberately mutilate your hand while operating a blister-pack sealing machine, but all I had going for me was guts.

Sol Le Coeur is a Smudge—a night dweller in an America rigidly divided between people who wake, live, and work during the hours of darkness and those known as Rays who live and work during daylight. Impulsive, passionate, and brave, Sol deliberately injures herself in order to gain admission to a hospital, where she plans to kidnap her newborn niece—a Ray—in order to bring the baby to visit her dying grandfather. By violating the day-night curfew, Sol is committing a serious crime, and when the kidnap attempt goes awry it starts a chain of events that will put Sol in mortal danger, uncover a government conspiracy to manipulate the Smudge population, and throw her together with D’Arcy Benoît, the Ray medical apprentice who first treats her, then helps her outrun the authorities—and with whom she is fated to fall impossibly and irrevocably in love.

Set in a vivid alternate reality and peopled with complex, deeply human characters on both sides of the day-night divide, Plus One is a brilliantly imagined drama of individual liberty and civil rights—and a compelling, rapid-fire romantic adventure story.

Here is Celia's review:

This book grabbed me from page one and didn’t let me go. The only reason I stopped reading was because of pesky necessities of the real world (work, food, sleep, etc.). While I was reading I both desperately wanted to know what would happen to the characters and desperately didn’t want to know. Elizabeth Fama doesn’t hold back from making her protagonists suffer and struggle. She throws every obstacle in their way and doesn’t give them a chance to recover before the next one comes along.

That being said, this is also one of the few YA fantasy books I’ve read recently that took normal human functions into account. Sol, our heroine, develops a fever and an infection, is always hungry, and looks like she’s been through hell most of the time. She has to take a break to sleep for 20 hours straight and to take her antibiotics. She decides to shower before going into battle again because, like most people, it helps her feel stronger and more put together. Sol is also rash, obstinate, and violent. She charges headlong into situations, believing she is right to the bitter end. She is exactly the type of character I would want on my side during a dystopian world crisis.

I feel like this book would work better as a series. The ending didn’t really set it up for a series, yet, it didn’t tie up all the ends either. I gave it an A- instead of an A because of the ending.

Click for ending spoilers!
See, this dystopian world is on the brink of war. Tensions are running high and society is about to break apart. Yet the book, in the end, dealt with the more immediate problems involving the baby kidnapping and the futures of the main characters. I wanted to see the world erupt. I wanted to see what happened when people revolted against the separation of day and night. It bugs me that there is still this world out there, this fictional world, where people are separated into day and night while their champions, once their own problems were solved, abandoned them to that fate. So if it isn’t a series, I think it definitely needs to be. If it is, excellent! I can’t wait to read what happens next.

Overall, it is a great book. Definitely one of the best dystopian fantasy novels I’ve read. Though, frankly, I’m not sure I could read it again. It did a number on my emotions. I am still in recovery. Oh, and if you’re into the nerdy-hot heroes like I am, this is the book for you. D’Arcy is majorly swoon worthy.

I don’t have as much to say about books I really like. You’ll just have to go read it for yourself.

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Plus One by Elizabeth Fama

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Add Your Comment →

  1. Coco says:

    Celia I enjoyed your review.

    I always have trouble explaining just what it is about a book that I really like. I’m considered by people who know me to be articulate if not concise in my speech. When it comes to explaining what I like about a book, or what I don’t like about a book, I have no words. I often resort to grunts, groans, or sighs.

    Alas, grunts, groans, and sighs don’t translate well to a review.

  2. DonnaMarie says:

    What Coco said.

  3. Susan says:

    Sounds interesting. I’ve put it on my wishlist–as in, wishing I get a chance to buy and read this when the ebook price drops from $9.99 to something more affordable. 🙂

  4. Lindsay says:

    If you like this book, check out Monstrous Beauty. I just listened to the audio version and thought it was fantastic.

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