Book Review: UnWholly by Neal Shusterman

Thanks to Connor, Lev, and Risa—and their high-profile revolt at Happy Jack Harvest Camp—people can no longer turn a blind eye to unwinding. Ridding society of troublesome teens while simltaneously providing much-needed tissues for transplant might be convenient, but its morality has finally been brought into question. However, unwinding has become big business, and there are powerful political and corporate interests that want to see it not only continue, but also expand to the unwinding of prisoners and the impoverished.
Cam is a product of unwinding; made entirely out of the parts of other unwinds, he is a teen who does not technically exist. A futuristic Frankenstein, Cam struggles with a search for identity and meaning and wonders if a rewound being can have a soul. And when the actions of a sadistic bounty hunter cause Cam’s fate to become inextricably bound with the fates of Connor, Risa, and Lev, he’ll have to question humanity itself.
Rife with action and suspense, this riveting companion to the perennially popular Unwind challenges assumptions about where life begins and ends—and what it means to live.

While YA is not my favorite genre, I got invested enough in this series to continue to book 2. While UnWholly kept my attention, it suffers from many of the issues that plague mid-series books. First, the book seems like a collection of subplots, and none of them feels relevant enough to become the main plot. Many things are happening, and the story lacks direction, feeling disjointed. There are too. Many characters fight for protagonism, only to have it for one chapter, while the pov switches rapidly to someone else.

We again have bad guys that are very bad and don’t have motivations that go beyond pure pride or malice. This feels, again, like in book 1, heavy-handed, but I concede that this is usually a problem in YA books, where character exploration and development only go so far.

I’ll be continuing with the series because I’m curious where this is going, but I will need a break to read something else in between.

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lomeraniel

My name is Elena. Since I was a little child I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I can’t resist a good novel. In 2015, while wait I started to listen to audiobooks and I discovered the pleasure in being able to read while doing my daily tasks, so there’s always an audiobook playing on my phone. If you see me with my Bluetooth headphones on, please be gentle, I get easily startled.

I live with my boyfriend, which I met during my six-year stay in Belgium, four cockatiels, eight lovebirds, and a hamster in Madrid, Spain; and I like to spend my free time knitting and sewing while listening to audiobooks.