I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to write this review, and I guess I'll just list the issues that I usually think about when I'm trying to determine if a book is worth reading/recommending...
1. The Writing: This is a good book filled with quality writing. I think that is important to say right away, because there is so much highly praised modern writing out there that is actually garbage. The author and everyone else involved with putting this book out were determined to release good polished work.
2. Genre: I do not usually read the New Adult genre, but this was worth stepping out of my box for. These characters definitely have youthful/tween minds, but this youth is balanced by wisdom that was forced upon them by some pretty horrible experiences. I do not usually read this much romance either, but there is enough non-romantic meat to this story to balance it out. While there is A LOT of it, the romance is never the most important thing going on-- Noah always has something much more important/ horrible looming over his head to worry about, and he does not loose sight of that. His actions toward his love interest and everyone else are based on whether it is the right (or least wrong) thing to do regardless of the romance, not because he's in love and the rest of the world be damned.
3. Setting/Genre Part 2: The futuristic dystopian aspect of this book's genre IS TOTALLY MY BAG BABY-- like gah, it makes my mouth water. This is a very well laid out world full of detail that allows you to get familiar with your surroundings. Tinnin manages to give you the lay out of her world and it's history in tiny little mouthfuls without making you trudge through pages of terrain description. She had a difficult task to accomplish, and she did a good job with it.
4. Pacing: This book never lags. It constantly pushes you forward. She'll give you a minute here and there to catch your breath and calm your brain, and then you're off running again. There are rarely places you feel comfortable putting the book down to get a couple hours of sleep ;) I was kind of crazy at work for the few days it took me to read this.
5. The Characters: I love deep point of view, because you get to know these characters in and out, and you love them for all their faults. When you are inside the individual character heads, you totally understand and accept their decision making processes. The good guys and bad guys are not perfectly divided into separate teams. The good guys are capable of doing some awful things for very sensible and believable reasons. I have a background in psychiatry, and thought I had one of the bad guys pegged as a total psychopath. At the end, I found out I might be wrong. There's enough substance there to make me willing to ride that train and find out how this guy is going to evolve. That's another bold and difficult task the author set up for herself, and I'm excited to see what she does with it. (I believe the author has at least some background in psychology as well.)
6. The Plot/Theme: Tinnin does not hold back. I hate to use the cliché "dark and gritty", but this is dark and gritty. The overarching themes of this series are obviously going to be forgiveness and salvation, and Tinnin is making it very clear how extremely radical forgiveness and salvation truly are. The sins committed in this book are the worst kind, and there is no sugar-coating them. These sins are completely unforgivable by worldly standards, and the good guys who commit them know this. As this book ends, there is no earthly power that can save/ redeem our hero(es). I think the hardest task for the rest of the series is going to be to believably convince our heroes that there is a Godly forgiveness and salvation that is expansive enough and radical enough for even them. The epilogue drops a load of meat that shows us that the next book is only going to get meatier. The actually story could go ANYWHERE from this point. The world is wide open enough to leave the rest of the series unpredictable. The focus may expand so we get a more macroscopic view of the government and country, there may be epic battles, allegiances might start flip-flopping-- there's no way to know, and it's great.
On a side-note, I love the tiny nods the book gives to the masters Steinbeck, Homer, and Orwell. The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is because I generally reserve my very few 5 star reviews to those masters that have held up over 50-1,000 years.
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![Haunted (State v. Sefore Book 1) by [Charity Tinnin]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ZYWnTiH6L._SY346_.jpg)
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