Rating: 2.5 stars
Synopsis: Neva keeps a list of The Missing - people like her grandmother who were part of her life but who have now vanished. The people who everyone else pretends never existed. In a nation isolated beneath the dome of the Protectosphere - which is supposed to protect but also imprisons - Neva and her friends dream of freedom. But life is becoming complicated for Neva. She's falling for her best friend's boyfriend - and she's learning more than she ever wanted to know about what might be happening to The Missing...
Review: Dystopian novels seem to be really taking a turn for the worse lately. This book sounds promising. Essentially a separate world, protected by the aptly (and somewhat arrogantly) named Protectosphere, where the good old government is keeping secrets from it's citizens. The actual story itself was a huge let down. The plot itself reminded me of Delirium except to me it wasn't written as well as Delirium was. The list of The Missing had the most potential for me. This is what would have separated Dark Parties from other dystopian's, but it was a very hit and miss thing to me. We'd have the list explained and then it wouldn't be mentioned for a while and, eventually, by the end of the book, the list was almost being added in as an afterthought. We moved away from Neva finding out about what happens to The Missing and, instead dwell more on her 'feelings' for her best friends boyfriend.
Oh God. In the opening chapter we see this 'romance' bloom in the dark party and it infuriated me throughout the entire book. It's essentially what I talked about in my last post about insta-connections. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for the insta-connection if it's done well. In my next post, the connection between the two characters was really well done and wasn't too in your face. To me, that's a well done insta-connection romance. Where it's obvious they both like each other but they don't think about each other 24/7. To me, so many YA books overdo the insta-connection and don't do it well enough to properly convey the characters feelings. Here, Neva is constantly thinking about Braydon. Constantly. Half the book is taken up with her wanting to be with him but not wanting to destroy her relationship with her best friend. So, we all know what happens there then. It was just irritating and to me, ruined the book. Instead of spending so much time obsessing over Braydon, Neva could have become a really strong heroine but she didn't, and so it almost seemed a waste of time visiting these characters and spending time in their world.
It's not just Neva who wasn't a strong character. None of the characters in the book were particularly strong. Ethan, for example is such a strange character. He doesn't add anything to the story at all. The whole reason he's there is that he was Neva's boyfriend previously but he got arrested doing something stupid and became dull and boring and Neva has decided she doesn't love him anymore. She refers to him like he's not my Ethan - like there are two different people which was a little strange to me. To me (and maybe it's just me) if you loved someone as intensely as Neva and Ethan seemed to, surely that wouldn't fade away after just six months of him 'changing'. I'd have tried a lot harder to find out what happened to him, rather than just letting him be which is what Neva seemed to do. He was just a dead weight - put into the story at random moments so that the reader doesn't forget about him but his whole 'quest to prove his love to Neva' was a little ridiculous and didn't fit into the story.
Neva herself wasn't as kickass as she needed to be. A dystopian heroine for me needs to be able to kick ass. Katniss does, Tris does - they develop over the course of the books so that, while they're strong characters in Chapter 1, they're even stronger at the end of the book. Neva didn't make that transition. She tried to but it didn't really work. She reluctantly takes part in one act of 'rebellion' and suddenly she feels like she can do anything? Really? That's not how these things work. When you think about Tris and Katniss, they don't know how important they are until everything's been set in motion. They're just normal girls trying to survive in their world and it's only through a series of actions that changes that. Tris is told she's Divergent and so her only focus is staying alive in the one faction that checks for Divergents. Katniss volunteers for Prim in the Hunger Games and so her focus is staying alive for her. Point is, even before these actions, you get the idea that there's a history to the world. A long and complex history and you get a feel for other characters without having to see them or hear from them and I think that's why these series are so successful. The authors have created an entire world and crafted it in a way that makes the actions of the protagonist seem normal. Tris and Katniss are so focused on survival that they don't consider rebellion until the last minute, unlike Neva whose entire being seems to be focused on rebelling against this mysterious government that we don't really get much information about. Neva seems to ping from being timid and afraid of getting in trouble, to being unafraid and ready to start a fight. It's confusing and exhausting and it doesn't make for a believable character.
Running on that theme of having important information inferred, Sara seems to rely too much on that. There are a lot of things that we're told that isn't ever explained to us. For example, Neva is afraid of the dark. We don't know why and we don't find out, she just has an inexplicable fear of the dark. Maybe if this interfered in the plot in some way it would be okay but it doesn't. Like Ethan, it's just there for no apparent reason and isn't explained and I was left wondering what the point of including it actually was. We don't know why Neva doesn't like Braydon to begin with. She hates him in Chapter 1 but again we don't know why. Then we launch into the whole but he's my best friends boyfriend debacle and I was lost. It's little details like this that the author has left to the reader to interpret but are things that we might actually need to know. Especially in the case of Braydon - why doesn't she trust him? What did he do to her that was so awful? If you're not going to explain it, don't put it in!
In short, this book had potential to be amazing. Unfortunately, there were just too many things that didn't add up or weren't thought out about the plot, the characters and the world itself and the plot had no real substance to it. Although it's a fast read, it was really disappointing. Looks like I'll just have to re-read Divergent again. Poor me...
Image from http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Parties-Sara-Grant/dp/B008W31IJY - no Copyright intended
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