Select #2

Select Few by Marit Weisenberg

Publication Date: October 9, 2018

Summary from Netgalley:

After rejecting the cult-like influence of her father’s family, Julia moves into a fancy hotel in downtown Austin. But she finds herself alone except for her boyfriend, John–and her fears. Once again she’s suppressing her abilities, afraid her family will come for John when they find out he’s been developing abilities of his own in her presence. The FBI is also keeping a close eye on Julia hoping she can lead them to her father, Novak, as he’s wanted for questioning in his former assistant’s death.

With tensions high, Julia and John agree to go separate ways for the summer, paving the way for Julia to reunite with Angus, fellow outcast. Together they set out on a road trip to California to find Julia’s mom and a way into Novak’s secret underground world. Along the way Julia will learn the Puri perhaps aren’t the only humans evolving into something different. . . and that maybe she’s the leader her people have needed all along.

ARC provided by Charlesbridge Teen via NetGalley for an honest review.

Confession:

I read and liked the first book in this series last year, you can read my review for that here. 

This book was a bit of a let down from the first one.  It felt disjointed and the plot just moved at a snail’s pace for most of it.  The final confrontation between Julia and her father fell totally flat, and by the end of it I felt a bit confused.  I think part of the issue might be that this was an ARC that just didn’t feel complete.  There were times when I felt like there were parts of the text missing as evidenced by large blank spots and sentences starting in the middle.  Hopefully if this is the case, these errors were caught before the final print.  

The thing I remember liking the most from that first book was the romance/relationship between Julia and John.  Sadly this was not the case with this book.  They spend most of it separated from each other,  which made it hard for them to develop their love for each other.  I also started to dislike Julia a little bit in this book, she gets a little whiney and wimpy instead of the strong and self-sufficient girl from the first book.  I also didn’t like the part of the book where she finds her mother.  That back story just didn’t work well for me.

As I said before John and Julia spend most of the book apart and we don’t hear from John except for little snippets of thoughts at the start of some of the chapters.  I would have liked to see more from him as his story line was far more interesting than Julia’s in this book.  

This book had potential to be so much better, and I hope that the final edit fixed a lot of what I had issues with.  I believe this is a duology, but there is potential for another book.  Things were left open ended enough that it could go on.  Not sure if I will continue if it does though after this one not quite doing it for me.