ARC REVIEW: ON THE EDGE OF GONE by Corinne Duyvis

ON THE EDGE OF GONE

Author: Corinne Duyvis
Source: eARC via the Publisher
Publisher: Amulet Books
Publication Date: March 8, 2016
Rating: 3/5 stars

Summary:
January 29, 2035. That’s the day the comet is scheduled to hit—the big one.

Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter outside their hometown of Amsterdam to wait out the blast, but Iris is nowhere to be found, and at the rate Denise’s drug-addicted mother is going, they’ll never reach the shelter in time.

A last-minute meeting leads them to something better than a temporary shelter: a generation ship, scheduled to leave Earth behind to colonize new worlds after the comet hits. But everyone on the ship has been chosen because of their usefulness. Denise is autistic and fears that she’ll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight? What about her mother and sister?


When the future of the human race is at stake, whose lives matter most?

Purchase:

Amazon | Chapters | TBD

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I started out really liking this one: there was an autistic main character, the end of the world, and cats. But it seemed like it took too much time to DO anything and that the novel could have been cut down by a good 100-150 pages and still told me the same story. It was too much and too long for me and I started to get bored in between the exciting parts. It seemed like there was a bit of inclusion for the sake of inclusion and I just wanted something a little more out of this one than what we got. But I do like that it is a standalone because there isn't enough of that in YA science fiction.

I liked Denise, I liked being in Denise's head, and I like that she was independent and wanted to take care of herself above all else. I also liked that she was willing to do whatever it took to ensure her own survival. Denise was great. Actually, I didn't really have a problem with any of the characters. They were all just trying to do what was best at the end of the world and I imagine that most people would have made some of the same choices as them to ensure the survival of the humans.

The majority of my problem stemmed from pacing and length. There was a lot of action at the beginning but it was interluded with breaks in the plot that seemed to just be about setting the stage for the world. There was a lot of description about the actual end of the world that didn't really seem necessary. I also feel like the story was just too long. I get that there were things that needed to happen, but it could have still been cut down. I just felt like there was an over-explanation of unnecessary things.

But I still enjoyed it. It is still a different and unique end of the world story. And it highlights autism and transgender people without making them feel like "OTHERS" but rather human beings. So I did quite enjoy that. I just thought that the pacing was a tad bit off.