Collide (Taking #3) - by Melissa West
Title: Collide
Series: The Taking (#3)
Author: Melissa West
Release Date: February 9th 2015
Genre: YA, Paranormal, Romance, Sci-fi
Official Blurb:
Military legacy Ari Alexander has survived alien spies, WWIV, and a changing world order. But when the new leader of Earth uses Jackson—the only boy she's ever let herself care about—to get to her, Ari has no choice but to surrender.
To free Jackson, she agrees to travel to the national bases to train others to fight. What she discovers is a land riddled with dying people. Ari has the power to heal by turning the fighters into aliens—half-breeds like her. If she succeeds, together, they have a chance at overthrowing the alien leader, Zeus. But if she fails, everyone she holds dear will be wiped away forever.
Once again, everything Ari’s come to believe is thrown into question. In a world of uncertainty, loyalties are tested, lies are uncovered, and no one can be trusted. If Ari and Jackson have any hope at survival and at preserving a life for the future, they must fight the final war with their eyes wide open.
My Review
NOTE: I was given this book as an ARC by Entangled publishing.
This book is the long awaited conclusion to the Taking series (note the word CONCLUSION, yes this is the FINAL book to those who weren't sure) and I was very eager to get my hands on a copy *grabby hands* In fact, as soon as the email came with the link I screamed so hard that people looked at me weirdly (not really, but there was definitely internal screaming)
This book was awesome! It was jam-packed with all the things that books one and two were filled with; assholery, friendship, love-ship, family-ship, war, action, fighting, bad-assery and everything else you could want in a book. I was also Hooked with a capital H (with much hookage; very hooked). I had to physically hide my kindle so that I would work instead of read, and even then it took me under twenty four hours to finish the book.
PACING: The pacing was great for most of the book - I got action but nothing whizzed by me too fast, and there weren't any times when I was flicking forward looking for action. EXCEPT (oh oh) - except for like the last three chapters. Everything came to a close too fast for me - we were in the thick of things and I was looking at the page count going "oh shit, oh shit, she's gonna end it on a cliffy - there's going to be another book! I CAN'T HANDLE ANy MORE OF THIS". And then I got to the end and I was like....what? I actually went back and reread those chapters and re-downloaded the book in case I missed some pages. Not because it didn't close everything off but because it was too fast, because it...wasn't enough. I don't know, the last chapters just left me feeling a little...empty
PLOT: The plot was incredible. Honestly, from some of the teasers I was expecting this book to take a bit of a different turn than it took, but it was still amazing. Again...looking back on it a few days after reading (because I had to have a few days of space before writing this) I feel like the plot was a bit thin, like there were some things that could've been explored a little more, that some characters and events lacked the depth that they could've possessed. As much as it might've killed me...this book almost could have been split in two, or had a little bit more oomph added to it in the form of a hundred more pages (I wouldn't have minded!)
WRITING: I cannot fault Melissa's writing. Although I had an ARC and there were a few word kefuffles (isn't that an incredible word!) and some minor grammar issues, I was hooked (as mentioned before) and drawn into the story, and all the credit for that goes to Melissa. The writing drew me in and had me on the edge of my seat.
OVERALL: Overall, I give this book a 4/5. The book is amazing and contributes to an amazing series, even if this last book could have been a little more. Congrats, Melissa, and I look forward to more books in the future!!
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