THE DARKEST MINDS: A DARKEST MINDS NOVEL BOOK 1 / BRACKEN, ALEXANDRA Paperback – 17 November 2016

The most wonderful book ever . It has met with all my expectations even exceeded them character wise and plot wise

Good book

Story seems nice

One of the best books I have read in the dystopian genre...The author keeps you hooked through out the book...When you think you have figured how the story is gonna go, boom... there is a twist...Thank god the trilogy is complete.. i cant just wait to start the second one..I wish they make it available in India and we dont have to import it...

The first thing that hit my nerve was the names of the character. I mean, c'mon :Ruby I-can't-bother-with-the-middle-name Dahl? (I forgot the middle name)Chubs? Clancy Gray? (For the record, he's a boy)Unbelievable.Call me paranoid but I can't bring myself to love a book if I don't like the character's name.It was the same story that sails a book. Diseases that give extraordinary power to the children and the government controlling the kids with violence. FYI, not my cup of tea.The writing was exceptionally good and the one other thing that kept me hooked up was Liam. Oh my dear Liam, I loved his character and Zu as well.It's probably worth a short.

Goodreads rating: 4 stars. Original Rating: 3.5 starsWhen Alexandra Bracken was writing this book, I bet she made a list of all the elements she wanted to add to the book. Intrigue, check. Comedy, check. Romance, check. Bad boy young villain, check. Crazy super powers, check.This book had all the elements one likes in a good YA dystopian book. But the only problem was, they were not in the right proportions or amount. From where Ruby, a powerful protagonist who starts as a girl in distress and fear of her own self and powers and ends up still better than what she was, starts in the book. She doesn't end there. In fact, she gets raggled up so many times that its rather confusing what actually IS happening in the book. But eventually, when the poetic randomness of this book is done, you start grasping the storyline. And then the story becomes interesting and gripping. A complete page turner.Ruby is one of the most powerful kids that remained after a deadly plague wiped out all the kids of of USA. The ones who remained were darted off as freaks. And true to the word, they were more-or-less tortured. They were split into groups of colours. Greens were the calm ones who still had a LIFE. Blues were telekinetic. Yellows controlled electricity, and Oranges had crazy mind powers.And Ruby was one. She could access a person's thought by physical touch. But she concealed until one day the White Noise, a sound made to capture all hidden Oranges, busted her to a woman working for an organisation that helps children to get out of the prisons there. Ruby was hiding as a Green.She is presented with a choice that leads her to meet the handsome Liam, a Blue who has a weird past of his own.The only thing was, I couldn't connect to the characters as much as everyone claims this book makes you connect. I did not. Or maybe just that this book and the characters had been hyped for me enough already? I wanted to fell the way they felt, but i just couldn't get those emotions in line.The story kept me guessing and what was happening still felt real because thats just how Alexandra wrote it. She wrote it to make us believe, And that is not something a lot of authors can achieve.My favourite part of the book was definitely the concluding fight. Its had the right amount of everything. And a good villain in a book is always a charmer.Sad scenes were the ones that were written with complete finesse.And the Awards..*Drumroll*Best side kick: Suzame or Zu.Why? She is a bundle of cuteness and crazy ass kicker when it comes down to it. She is unafraid and measured at the little age of ten. And also the best written character in this book.Best negative role: Clancy Gray.Why? What do I say? I have a soft spot for bad boys, and Clancy maintained that demeanour. I loved him.Best character: LiamWhy? He's a little weird and very easy to understand. He knows how to conceal his secrets and when to reveal them. That's a good trait.

4.5 ⭐It was action packed from the first page. I was literally hooked. I read it just the way you see a movie. Writing was amazing. And I hear myself sobbing in the end.

The Darkest Minds is set in the near future in which there’s a plague which spreads and starts killing children. The ones who survive develop superhuman abilities and are taken to different camps under the guise of rehabilitation. But in reality, they’re prisoners. Ruby was taken to one such camp at age 10, after she unknowingly made her parents forget who she was. Six years later, she’s broken out of there but she doesn’t know who to trust and she’s terrified of her own abilities.And when I say terrified, I mean that she’s genuinely afraid of what she might do to anyone she comes into physical contact with. She’s been beaten down by all that’s happened to her and she has a difficult path ahead to find strength and faith in herself.Alexandra Bracken has written Ruby’s character very well. The book is from her perspective and I liked reading of her inner struggles and seeing her slowly grow. I’ve read a few review in which readers complained that she was “weak” because she doesn’t use her powers and wasn’t excited about them. Total bull, in my opinion. How can you expect her to be excited about something that got her sent to a hell camp after she accidentally made her parents forget her existence?But anyway, that’s their opinion. I though Ruby was great, despite the ending. I mean, if I look at things impersonally, the ending was good. Otherwise, it was more of a ‘Why the hell would you do that Ruby?!’ kind. But I’m going to have faith (as much as a huge sceptic such as myself can have) that she’ll put things right.Other than Ruby, we have three main characters: Liam, Chubs and Zu. They’re all kids who’ve escaped a different camp and I liked all three of them. I’m a bit partial to Liam because he is just such a great guy but for the most part, equal love all around.The characters all worked really well together and when the story took a dip in the middle and became a bit slow and uneventful, they kept things going. The pacing in the beginning and end was good and so was the story, though it was, at times, predictable. Also, I would’ve have liked for the romance aspect of the story to be better developed.But all that aside, the only major problem I had with the novel was the author struggling to paint a clear picture for the reader. In any scene that had action or required a lot of imagery, things got a bit fuzzy. It wasn’t that bad, but it was inconvenient. Still, it didn’t take much away from my enjoyment of the book.This was a good start to the series. I’m excited to read the sequel and I recommend giving this one a shot.