Review: The Thousandth Floor

Review:

Review: The Thousandth Floor

 

I received a copy from Netgalley.

 

There are some books you know you are going to love right from the first chapter. For me, this was one of those books. Rich people drama is a guilty pleasure of mine (even though I loathe reality TV). Though this is just what that book read like. I would love to see this book as a TV show. It’s one of those weird things where you don’t actually like most of the characters much but can’t stop watching things.

 

This book is basically Gossip Girl of the future. A host of pretty people drama who live on the upper tower floors, the Highliers, and the downTower people who they get involved with. A fairly large cast of delightfully diverse characters from both the upper tower and the down tower falls, all of whom wind up interacting with each other.

 

It starts off with a bag, some unknown girl falling from the top of the tower. And then the rest of the book flips back to the beginning to get to that point. Initially I thought it was fairly obvious once all the different characters were introduced, but as the novel went on and the plots and characters became deeper and twister, several times I found myself thinking, even when things were going smoothly, at some point this is all going to go hideously hideously wrong. I thought I had it all figured out a few times, but the end was completely surprising. Never saw it coming.

 

Each chapter is from a different character’s point of view. There’s your Highliers - Avery who lives on the very top floor genetically engineered to be perfect and beautiful and appears to have everything she could ever want, expect the one boy she loves desperately but can never have. Avery’s adopted brother Atlas, who disappeared for a year and has just returned out of the blue. Avery’s best friend Leda, who’s hiding a summer stint in rehab due to a designer drug addiction. Leda’s struggling to get back to normal and hide her secret from her friends. Leda’s very dry cut snarky boarding on bitchy. With a secret fling with Atlas to hide and feelings to figure out on where that’s going. Along with Eris who finds out a major family scandal which throws her whole world into chaos. Though not without relationship drama of her own.  Along with party thrower Cord. And a few other background friend type characters.

 

From downTower there’s computer genius hacker Watt who’s actually a really nice guy but has some brilliant technology in the form of some sort of super computer chip which he’s had illegally grafted to his frontal lobe (or something along those lines), Rylin who’s solely responsible for her younger sister after the death of their mother, struggling to make ends meet.

 

This book gets big bonus points for character diversity, and an f/f relationship.

 

All the characters find themselves interacting at some point, and each one of them is considerably deeper than their first impressions give. Each one managed to surprise me by the end of the book by their actions or their emotions as their plots changed and grew. Brilliant character depth. The futuristic technology was equally fascinating, and the setting of Manhattan 100 years into the future is visual, striking and believable as well.

 

Great twist at the end too.

 

I loved this one. I need more. NOW!

 

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins UK, Children' for approving my request to view the title.

Original post: sunsetxcocktail.booklikes.com/post/1437721/review-the-thousandth-floor