The Program by
Suzanne Young (BOOK 1)
My rating:
5 of 5 stars
When suicide becomes an epidemic among teenagers, Sloane and James have to play by the unspoken rules, every second, in order to stay out of The Program:
1. Don't cry. Ever.
2. Feel nothing or at least appear not to have any real or strong emotions.
3. Attend all assigned therapy and say only what is expected, never the truth.
4. Never answer the daily suicide quiz questions truthfully. There's only one set of right answers, and everybody knows it.
Basically, to survive, teenagers must live in a world of lies, or they will get sent to The Program, which will recondition them by removing their past, including complete memories of people and life events, before returning them to the world empty, numb, and "cured." When a best friend goes into The Program, a complete stranger comes back out. This is obviously all for the teens benefit, in order to keep them safe from harm and preserve future generations.
I had no idea what this was about when I started reading, and at first I was extremely skeptical. However, this story blew me away. The concept was unexpected, and the way the story unfolds was fascinating. I spent half the book being indignant and the rest of it being stressed out and worried, so it's the kind of book that demands an emotional investment.
Pages: 432
The Treatment by
Suzanne Young (BOOK 2)
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
This is book two and the final, official book in the series, though there is a short novella that follows, and there are now two books the precede this series.
This was a good finale overall, but I didn't like it quite as much as book one. I don't know if it's just me lately, but I felt like this ending was too abrupt for me. It's not that the story is short. It's more about the way it all gets wrapped up. It's very fast, sudden, and unexpected, and then the story just breezes forward to address people's lives in the after phase.
I guess I wanted a bit more of a climax, but instead, we reached the point where the peak of the story should exist and there was no big bang. Instead, the story just sheared off from the last high point before the climax, to the falling action that ties up loose ends and finalizes a story. Personally, I wanted a big bang up of a conclusion, with gradually decreasing tension until the story was wrapped up, but this book was missing the high point, which felt like a bit of a letdown after all that reading.
Despite that, I still enjoyed the book and series as a whole.
Pages: 368
The Recovery by
Suzanne Young (NOVELLA, BOOK 2.5)
My rating:
3 of 5 stars
This 2.5 novella isn't bad, but it's not necessary. It's not adding anything to the story line or characters, and it's not that much fun to read. If you want to watch a character spend more time feeling like a crappy person for past decisions, then go ahead and read it. By the time book two ended, I had seen and heard enough of that already, so this was just excess that didn't do much for me.
My favorite part was probably the exploration of the growing friendship between James and Realm, which was actually interesting and almost sweet, in the strangest sort of way.
Had the story shown some more character growth, I might have been a bit more interested, but it felt like the story was a lot more of the same stuff I already knew and had already heard. The funny part, is that it deals with a lot of dark, twisty emotions, which normally fascinates me, but this just did not pull me in and felt very repetitive.
Pages: 78
Illuminae by Amie Kaufman
