Reboot Review

TITLE Reboot (Reboot #1)
AUTHOR Amy Tintera
PUBLICATION May 7th 2013 by HarperTeen
READ April 15 to 19, 2013
SOURCE HarperTeen via Edelweiss for review

Five years ago, Wren Connolly was shot three times in the chest. After 178 minutes she came back as a Reboot: stronger, faster, able to heal, and less emotional. The longer Reboots are dead, the less human they are when they return. Wren 178 is the deadliest Reboot in the Republic of Texas. Now seventeen years old, she serves as a soldier for HARC (Human Advancement and Repopulation Corporation).

Wren’s favorite part of the job is training new Reboots, but her latest newbie is the worst she’s ever seen. As a 22, Callum Reyes is practically human. His reflexes are too slow, he’s always asking questions, and his ever-present smile is freaking her out. Yet there’s something about him she can’t ignore. When Callum refuses to follow an order, Wren is given one last chance to get him in line—or she’ll have to eliminate him. Wren has never disobeyed before and knows if she does, she’ll be eliminated, too. But she has also never felt as alive as she does around Callum.

The perfect soldier is done taking orders.

When I try to think about how to describe my reading experience with Reboot, the only thing I can think of it that it was like the most not fun rollercoaster ever. That sounds really negative and like the whole book sucks but that’s not the case. The beginning of the book was like that rollercoaster going up, up, & up. Exciting things were happening; I was introduced to a world that was intense, I met characters that I really liked and the seeds for a sweet romance were planted. However, once a rollercoaster reaches the top of that climb it has to go down and down this one went. The problem is that once it reached that plateau it just continuously went down and never made its way back up again.

We are introduced to Wren who is a Reboot. Reboots are people who have died and in this world where a disease has run rampant they come back to life after a certain amount of time, they are “rebooted.” Wren took the longest in history to reboot, coming back after 178 minutes. The length of time that you are dead weighs heavily on a reboot and it shows in her. She is very mechanical and empty when we meet her. She has been trained by a company called HARC (who owns all reboots upon them waking up) to be a machine. I loved how vicious this little blonde girl was, the detachment that she felt to the things going on around her lent to some hilarious dialogue and really sucked me into the book. When Callum enters her world at HARC he is one of the shortest reboots ever, clocking in at a mere 22 minutes. He had so much humanity left in him, so much life. He was someone that I really liked right away as he forced his way into Wren’s life. I rooted for Callum, he was a really great love interest and was so funny. The best part of their romance was how the growth of it was such a stark contrast to the environment in which it was growing. While they were training for combat we watched these two fall for one another which was pretty fun.

Once the relationship was solidified the book started going downhill for me though. In the second half of this novel it became more of a gooshy romance story and Wren changed far too much which caused me to lose a lot of respect for her. She lost her strength and was so clouded by this love she felt for Callum. I missed who she was in the beginning, I missed her kick ass first & take names later personality, I really wish she kept more of her earlier traits instead of losing who she was in the romance. The only thing that kept me interested despite all the cheesiness of the second half was the effects on the under 60 characters of the testing HARC was doing to them. That was a great element to have added to the story and I was anxious to find out exactly what was going on.

This novel started out as a solid 4 for me but lost a star in the second half because there were so many eyeroll moments. I can’t go too into detail about what happens because that would be spoiler territory but I just wish it was handled better and focussed a lot less on the romance. It is really saddening because two characters that I really liked came together and I thought I would definitely be a fan of the love story but the way the characters changed too much and lost who they were just didn’t work for me. I still found this to be a really fun read despite my issues and will most likely continue on with the series. If you’re looking for a more romance heavy tale with heavy doses of action this one could be for you, just be prepared for a pretty drastic shift at the 50% mark.