Author: Amy Joy
Length: 288 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (July 12, 2011)
Format: paperback
Description:
When Allie Thompson graduated, she thought she'd put high school behind her. But when a series of violent outbreaks by teens sends panic surging through the nation, high school is right where Allie finds herself again. Now remolded into what the government calls The Academie, what was once the public school system is now the permanent home of everyone 22 and under.
After a year of college and a lifetime as a model student, Allie doesn't take well to The Academie's militaristic nature or its 16 foot perimeter fences. Remembering all she's left behind, including the boyfriend she's now years away from seeing again, Allie plummets into depression. But when strange things begin to happen and her brother disappears, Allie realizes she must unravel the mystery that is The Academie--before it's too late.
My Thoughts:
Just imagine...you are an adult now, you have graduated high school, started college, have an amazing boyfriend and all of a sudden that is taken away. The government decides that due to your age you aren't mature enough to handle living in the "real" world without killing a bunch of people. Their solution is to lock you up in a government run boarding school until you turn 22. Nothing can go wrong, right?
I absolutely love the idea behind Amy Joy's The Academie! As someone who just recently passed their 22nd birthday the idea of the government suddenly taking away all of the freedom and life I have enjoyed and gotten used to is absolutely terrifying and intriguing all at the same time. The Academie is a good book with a great premise, but it could have been better. As with the majority of books written it is key that the reader feel some connection to the characters in the book. In this case I just didn't get the connection I was searching for. Allie is an interesting character and admittedly has her moments that you get a glimpse of her personality. Readers get these glimpses when she meditates and visits the times in her past when she was happiest, but other than that she is kind of flat just like the rest of the characters. The secondary characters had the potential as well to bring some much needed flavor, but they kind of fell by the side and turned into more of an after thought.
Moving onto the "idea" behind the story. As stated above I absolutely loved the premise of this book. This genre is so prevalent today that it is on the verge of, if not already overdone. The Academie brings a new and fresh idea that has so much promise and is generally interesting and quite frankly scary if you put yourself in that situation. The problem? It didn't live up to the boat load of potential it had. The first problem is the pacing is off. It takes forever for the first part of the story to pick up and then there is the ending. Just when the book is finally picking up pace, finally gaining the depth that I had been looking for the characters all of a sudden magically find their answers and it's over. I noticed I only had two pages left and I kept thinking to myself, hoping, that the book makers had accidentally forgot to bind the last part of the book. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and the ending was just that abrupt. All in all, the book wasn't that bad and it had it's really good moments. The let down from building it up so much in my mind compared to the actual product was just disappointing. I give this book a 3 STAR rating (the idea is what saved it from being a 2-2 1/2 Star rating).
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