Title: Numbers Game (Numbers Game #1)
Author: Rebecca Rode
Reviewer: Karen
Genre: YA Dystopian
Rating: Love
Alerts/Warnings: Murder associated in a dystopian society
Premise: "Treena is nervous for Rating Day. A single number will brand her forever—a valuable citizen, or a pathetic waste of space. Her top-Rated boyfriend is confident their scores will coincide so they can attend the academy together. But when the big day arrives, her true number shocks everyone.
To get her life and boyfriend back, she must go undercover and expose a military spy. Doesn’t sound too hard, except that someone wants her dead. And then there’s Vance, the mysterious soldier with a haunted past and beautiful brown eyes. Together, they discover a dark numbers conspiracy, one that shatters the nation’s future. Treena must join up with Vance if she is to survive the dangerous game of numbers—and the terrible war that rages within her heart."
Opinions: I ordered this book last week, but saved reading it until I could have the author (and friend and critique buddy) sign it last night at the official release party. So yeah. I took the day off today from doing pretty much everything (except making my daughter's birthday cake) so that I could read this book. I could not put it down. Part of it was from fascination to see how the final product fared against the beta draft I read a while ago. Part of it is because of the story itself. Let's just say . . .I loved the final product. It is strong, compelling, and hard to put down.
I love the split point of view between Treena and Vance. I was intrigued by each person's character growth. The secondary characters are strong and definitely add to the story. The part I love most though is the creation of the world, to the point it was its own character to me. Everything about the world was vivid, impressive, and complex. It impacted everyone and everything. The tendrils of information about the past are given smoothly and not an info dump and definitely strengthen the story. Its a fascinating world that Rebecca created.
Some of the timing was slightly confusing to me, but some of that could be because my kids had to be fed and all, and I might have missed something. Especially when it came to the development of the relationship between Vance and Treena, but that's because I'm a sucker for drawing that kind of thing out.
Despite any of that I still stand by what I had told Rebecca previously, "This story is better than Scott Westerfeld's book Uglies . . . and I LOVE that book."
