A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A Thousand Pieces of You caught my eye almost a year ago when it popped up on my recommendations even before it was published in November. The synopsis sounded promising, although I still retained some hesitation considering it belonged to the “dystopian” style genre with which I am not as familiar.
However, I have to say that this book was engaging, entertaining and full of adventure.
The protagonist and also the narrator of the story was represented as a multidimensional character, containing depth and human qualities that engaged the reader and increased their curiosity to find out more about this young woman bound on this unlikely journey. Having come across a few badly written stories with female leads that were supposed to show female empowerment and strength, which only ended up in complete disaster, I felt relieved and quite happy that authors nowadays are still capable creating female characters that possess strength, but do not contain the “better-than-thou” attitude, which could ruin any good story. The secondary characters were a great addition and provided a good foil to the protagonist. They aided in the fleshing out of the story, the protagonist and were able to hold up the story without solely depending on the protagonist.
The narration, independently from the character, felt easy and effortless. The reader felt as if this story was meant to be told only to the one reading it. It maintained a steady level of action interspersed with peaks of excitement that felt natural and belonging to the story, instead of acting like desperate attempts to keep the reader from falling sleep. It became quite clear early on in the narration that this story was to belong to a series or multi-part story and at the conclusion of A Thousand Pieces of You I could have jumped right into the next book.
I should dedicate a few lines to the writing style, since I very much appreciated the care the author took in choosing her style and words that made this story a great reading experience. With almost all books belonging to the YA genre, there will always be a component of romance present, ranging from a mere crush to genuine affection to intense love scenes. The romance present in this story was tastefully done, it did not take precedence over the main story and it contained an element of realism that kept the reader from rolling their eyes or even potentially losing their lunch. The love scene was equally tastefully done and it was a great relief to see that YA authors were still able to keep young love clean and elegant.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, who enjoys a great story, great writing and plenty of surprising plot twists.
