Review: Under the Never Sky

Title: Under the Never Sky

Author: Veronica Rossi

Rating: 4 Stars

Summary:

Since she’d been on the outside, she’d survived an Aether storm, she’d had a knife held to her throat, and she’d seen men murdered. This was worse.
Exiled from her home, the enclosed city of Reverie, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland—known as The Death Shop—are slim. If the cannibals don’t get her, the violent, electrified energy storms will. She’s been taught that the very air she breathes can kill her. Then Aria meets an Outsider named Perry. He’s wild—a savage—and her only hope of staying alive.
A hunter for his tribe in a merciless landscape, Perry views Aria as sheltered and fragile—everything he would expect from a Dweller. But he needs Aria’s help too; she alone holds the key to his redemption. Opposites in nearly every way, Aria and Perry must accept each other to survive. Their unlikely alliance forges a bond that will determine the fate of all who live under the never sky.
In her enthralling debut, Veronica Rossi sends readers on an unforgettable adventure set in a world brimming with harshness and beauty.

Review:

Wow. Where to start...?

Ok… so this book was completely unique and different than any other book Ive read yet! Was there romance? Yes. Action? Yes. Dystopian? Mostly. But still, SO different.

I think it was more sci-fi than dystopian.

Anyways… Let me just start.

The story is about Aria, who is a dweller, a person who lives in a Pod and lives her life through virtual realties called Realms. They don’t really feel or see or do ANYTHING real! Then she is thrown out of the pod, basically because she knows too much and was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On the Outside, people live differently. She meets an outsider and they form a weak alliance to try and find her mother- since the outsider, Perry, also is looking for someone.

They go on a loooong journey and fall in love. That’s basically the story. BUT its different because, I suppose this is Earth, just WAY in the future. OR it could just be another planet all together. I don’t know. Its never really explained. There is the Aether… which you never know what it is. But I guess its some kind of electrical energy that has scorched the world. That’s why everyone lives in the pods now.

The Outsiders have adapted though, and have extra “Sense’s” Like Super hearing, or super sight.

Characters: Aria was a nobody at first. She was a dweller that had never experienced fear or hunger or anything. After being throw out, she changes A LOT! Its beautiful to watch her grow and learn, to be strong and courageous! LOVED Aria.

Perry is an outsider who has issues of his own. Past feelings that haunt him. I didn’t really like him at first, but eventually grew to love him.

The romance between the two of them was PERFECT. It felt real. They hated eachother at first, they were complete opposites. But then grew to KNOW one another, then respect the other, then love! Just as real love happens. It was what all the YA novels these days are missing.

And really, this didn’t feel like a YA novel at all. She was 17, he 18 or something like that, but they acted and seemed SO much older. Not to mention, there is sex in this book. Though its clean and not graphic, I was surprised to see it in a “YA novel.”

My issues: The first 100 pages were VERY slow!!! VERY slow! And it was even harder to get into it because of the verbiage used, this is the future and so obviously they speak differently, but there was very little explanation at first. And some things never get explained, like the Aether, as I mentioned before. So… it was hard to relate when I didn’t even know what was being said.  –after a while, it was ok, and the story got better and you began to understand what the words meant.

Also… like I just mentioned, this just didn’t feel like a dystopian OR YA… so I had the wrong impression going into the story.

Overall though, my LITTLE issues, made no difference! And I really enjoyed the story and am waiting anxiously for the sequel!