Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.
The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?
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I first heard about this book through a reviewer that I watch on youtube. Seeing as how i've loved every single book that she loved, I was extremely excited to read this one. I had been trying for months to get ahold of a copy of this book for less than twenty bucks (my library is very small so they didn't have it), and FINALLY out of the blue, I get a random email that tells me about the deal they were having on all devices for The Murder Complex, so I freaked out and bought it immediately for two dollars. Score, am-I-right? I was also nervous that I had hyped it up to be too much, and that it would be a letdown. I was wrong, so very wrong.
The basic premise for this book is that a girl, Meadow, gets a job so that her family and little sister can eat since they have almost no money, but she ends up meeting a ward (orphan) named Zephyr, and together they discover the truth about their screwed up society. Without any spoilers, I can tell you that their society is extremely dangerous. They live inside a ginormous fence, that will kill you if you try to escape, and every night hundreds of people are murdered, seemingly for sport since they really have nothing to gain from these people. Also they have these things called "nanities" in them, that make you heal extremely fast, and brings this book into a more sci-fi dystopian genre.
Though I'm not really a sap, I still know a thing or two about how I like relationships in books to play out. This book was definitely not my favorite example of a relationship. I felt like Meadow, a girl who has trained her whole life NOT to trust others, fell way too hard and way to fast for Zephyr. It just felt rushed and a little childish for me. I mean she didn't have any obligation to him, yet she risked literally everything she had for him. Could have gone a little slower.
"Sometimes we have to give up little pieces of our humanity so that we can keep living."
- Lindsay Cummings, The Murder Complex
My favorite character, though she was not either of the main characters, was Talan. Zephyr's best friend since he could remember, Talan was strong, funny, and all around an nice person. I never caught the part where it said exactly how old she was, but she had had a daughter, so she was probably around 18ish. Whenever Zephyr needed her, she was always there for him. She could have given up on him the first day he arrived, when he was just a jumble of tears and useless memories, but she didn't, and that makes me love her so much more. Except the end of the book made me want to cry because of her, because why Lindsay? Why?
Every time this book started to get a little dry, there would be a major plot twist, and it would hook me all over again, and let me tell you, there were a lot of plot twists! I really enjoyed Lindsay Cummings not creating a cookie cutter family for Meadow, and that despite how screwed up they were, she still had a love-hate relationship with them. I finished this book within two days of obsessively reading it wherever I possibly could. It was bloody, and creepy, and is definitely not for the faint of heart, but I would fully recommend reading it. If you are like me, and horror movies or Hannibal have always been a favorite of yours, I would tell you right now to go pick up this book.
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Hey! I was wondering how you added that cool little Goodreads reading challenge widget on your page?! X
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