When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government "rehabilitation camp". She might have survived the mysterious disease that's killed most of America's children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.
Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.
When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she's on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her – East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can't risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.
When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.
When I first heard of this book, I was immediately interested, because hearing about people with 'abilities' always intrigues me. Seeing as this was such a popular book within my age group, I decided to get it in hardback for the pretty cover, which is gorgeous.
This books starts off quite slowly, as you jump right into the story without knowing what 'ability' the main protagonist Ruby had. It starts off in a camp for children with these abilities, and what I found confusing about this bit was that children with the same abilities were grouped into the same colours. The colours were mentioned a lot during the book and I was always confused as I feel like the abilities weren't really explained fully, as some people were nicknamed their colour, and I didn't understand what being a 'green' meant you could do. The beginning of the story mainly concentrates on how Ruby feels towards herself and how she acts to other people. We meet Chubs, Liam and Zu and we find out how scared Ruby is of herself. After we meet and 'warm up' to the new characters, the story kind of goes downhill from there until the climax, which got me up late wanting to read more. I felt like there were only certain bits of this book that I really enjoyed, and the other parts I was dragging myself through. Once the climax dies down, the ending was extremely difficult to keep up with as I didn't feel like I was interested enough to understand where everyone was at what time.
Ruby was a pretty cool character to read about. She's kind of badass, and is actually really caring.
Liam was one of my favourite characters, as he was the other half of the romance side of this book, and he was the kind of character that everyone wants next to them, as they are always thinking about you before themselves, and they know exactly how to make you feel special.
Chubs was my favourite character overall. He was extremely cautious of everyone new he met because he cared so much for Liam, which he showed in his attitude towards Ruby near the beginning of the book. His character was really developed as you could see how near the end of the book he was just as worried about Ruby as he was Liam, which shows how much he will care for someone when he becomes close to him or her.
Overall I gave this book 3/5 stars as I did enjoy some of it, and the bits that I did enjoy were extremely good. The only problem is, the faster I read a book, the more I enjoy it, as I want to rush through it. This book took me over three weeks, which is one of the longest times it has taken me to read a book. Also, some of the time I was reading it, I felt like I was forcing myself to do it.
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