Plus One by Elizabeth Fama

Plus One #1

Summary:

"It takes guts to deliberately mutilate your hand while operating a blister-pack sealing machine, but all I had going for me was guts.

     Sol Le Coeur is a Smudge—a night dweller in an America rigidly divided between people who wake, live, and work during the hours of darkness and those known as Rays who live and work during daylight. Impulsive, passionate, and brave, Sol deliberately injures herself in order to gain admission to a hospital, where she plans to kidnap her newborn niece—a Ray—in order to bring the baby to visit her dying grandfather. By violating the day-night curfew, Sol is committing a serious crime, and when the kidnap attempt goes awry it starts a chain of events that will put Sol in mortal danger, uncover a government conspiracy to manipulate the Smudge population, and throw her together with D'Arcy Benoît, the Ray medical apprentice who first treats her, then helps her outrun the authorities—and with whom she is fated to fall impossibly and irrevocably in love."

So, this book came out last April. I hadn't heard of it until I saw someone haul it, and I thought I'd give it a try. A lot of people seem to like it, and praise it.

For me though, this book was just okay. The characters were great, and that is about where my praise stops. The story itself was good, but the concept of segregating people into Night and Day, was odd. Maybe I missed it, but I don't really remember it being mentioned how they choose who goes where, and why the segregation needed to be a thing in the first place.  I know there are a lot of dystopian stories out there, and the need to be original is important. But there is such a thing as trying too hard, and this book was bordering on trying too hard.

Sol was a pretty great protagonist. She wasn't the brightest crayon in the box for the first 60% of the book. It was more of a stubborn impatient mindset, over just being generally dumb.

D'Arcy was kind of her opposite, he was very level headed and extremely patient; perhaps that was done on purpose. Him being a Ray, she's a Smudge.

I was bored through, I'd say most of the book. There was a lot of sitting around and talking, or she was unconscious during multiple parts. The story really didn't pull me in completely until the book was almost finished. Then again, this is me and I have read a lot of dystopian stories. Many on the not as well known area.

Before I forget, the romance was actually done very well. And was one of the better parts of the book for how it was handled.

The only thing that has left me really confused is that it's labeled as the first book, not a stand alone. But there are no sequels attached to it on Goodreads, only a prequel novella. And considering how this book ended, almost completely wrapped up I don't know how or if a sequel will be implemented.