The Body Electric by Beth Revis

 Amy  
 Lynnie


young adult, fantasy, science fiction

In The Body Electric, Ella Shepherd lives in a future society. Her world is completely man-made and filled with advanced technology of all varieties. Soon however, Ella discovers that everything she believes is not true--someone has altered her memories and she is never quite sure who to trust. Does she trust the government or the rebels to help her stop a war that seems inevitable?

Amy and Lynnie are almost perfectly in sync with our reviews on this one. 

Amy's Review:

What a disappointment. I LOVED Beth Revis’ Across the Universe trilogy. So, I had high hopes for her latest novel. Sadly, the world she tried to build was never believable, mostly due to the foundation of the story--the dream states (or “reveries”)—being described unsatisfactorily. With science fiction, the science part has to be plausible and it just was not.

Her “bad guy” had such an obvious bad guy name that I knew this person would be the source of the problems before I even knew what the problems were. The fact that Ella and Jack did not seem too concerned with how Ella located Jack was completely unrealistic. When two people do not trust each other and one miraculously shows up at the other’s door, you would think they would make it a priority to figure out exactly how that happened. Also, how could an apparently insignificant young man command the masses and secrets that he possessed? It just did not jive.

On top of all the problems with the storyline, the type-os and writing errors were prolific throughout. The editorial oversights made the novel seem cheap and rushed. Perhaps only the e-book suffered from the lousy editing, but it was worse than any other novel I’ve read with the exception of Advanced Reader Copies (which are expected to have issues since the editing process is not finalized at that point). This was not an ARC. In fact, this book has been out for 5 months and, thankfully, I only paid 99-cents for it on sale.

The storyline got better at the half-way mark and was very interesting (and there were no ridiculous reveries) until the far-fetched, laughable ending. While the author had moments of creative brilliance (the design of their location, the interesting underneath world, the caves, the auto-boats, the technological inventions in the house and city), I simply could not immerse myself into the story. I enjoyed the nod to the author’s own creation, the spaceship Godspeed, from the Across the Universe trilogy. But, overall, I would not recommend this novel.

Lynnie's Review: 

Very disappointed in Revis' latest book. I really enjoyed her Across the Universe series, so I thought I might enjoy this too- I was wrong.

First of all, the plot is incredibly predictable. There was very little suspense about what was going on (despite the fact that the book tries to convince us that we are unraveling some great secret) & what was going to happen in the end.

While the world the characters live in is interesting, the plot itself felt like a mishmash of stories I've read or seen before. Revis does no favors to herself on this front by including multiple references to Across the Universe throughout the story, which made me question her creative ability. One reference is fun, multiple references feel forced. I also didn't enjoy how the characters repeated themselves over & over & over- I understood the intention the first time a character said something. I think it was supposed to imply uncertainty in the character, but instead it was just repetition for repetition's sake. Also, there are numerous typos & issues where a word (or two) is left out of a sentence entirely so that you have to read it a few times to figure out what you just read & what it's supposed to mean. Bottom line, this was a book desperately in need of an editor.