Review: Pawn

Pawn (The Blackcoat Rebellion #1)
Aimee Carter
Dystopia

YOU CAN BE A VII. IF YOU GIVE UP EVERYTHING. 

For Kitty Doe, it seems like an easy choice. She can either spend her life as a III in misery, looked down upon by the higher ranks and forced to leave the people she loves, or she can become a VII and join the most powerful family in the country. 

If she says yes, Kitty will be Masked—surgically transformed into Lila Hart, the Prime Minister's niece, who died under mysterious circumstances. As a member of the Hart family, she will be famous. She will be adored. And for the first time, she will matter. 

There's only one catch. She must also stop the rebellion that Lila secretly fostered, the same one that got her killed …and one Kitty believes in. Faced with threats, conspiracies and a life that's not her own, she must decide which path to choose—and learn how to become more than a pawn in a twisted game she's only beginning to understand.

This book got a lot of hype, and while I was weary of that, overall I thought it was justified. FOR YEARS I've been searching for a book that ranks you by your intelligence- it seems to me like it would be humanity's natural course. I mean, isn't that the ruling factor now? Who are the billionaires? Creators of software, social network sites, apps and gadgets.  Basically, I was so happy to read about that system, and thought it was very well done. 

Another aspect I liked about Pawn was that the story was VERY character driven- wasn't a bunch of random stuff thrown at a group of people. Their decisions and actions propelled the plot. And there were a lot of those! I was surprised and thrown off at every corner.

Speaking of characters- I have to say that I loved them, but I didn't feel we, as readers, were able to fully understand them. By the end of the book, I was thoroughly inthralled by them but still had no idea what made them tick. For that alone I look forward to the sequel.

Now for my nitpick: After the big finale, if you will, or the climax, the correct course of action seemed really obvious to me and I think it will be to a lot of readers. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say they should have exposed the whole thing! There was nothing to stop them. Instead the author chose to stretch out the main conflict for another book, totally unnecessarily. I WILL read it, because I did really enjoy this one, but it'll really have to get complicated IN A WAY THAT MAKES SENSE (I'm referring to countless spin-offs that generally throw some problem out of the blue that in real life would probably not happen. *coughs* Sebastian coming back from the dead) .

Rating:

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Love,
Esty