Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Series: Unwind #1
Pages: 310
Release Date: June 2009
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: ★★★★★

Connor, Risa, and Lev are running for their lives.

The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. I just finished this book, and I swear to god this was seriously one of the best books I've read in a long while. It just flowed so nicely as if I wasn't even spending my time reading a book! It was like a movie in my head! It's so hard to find books so beautifully crafted like Neal Shusterman's Unwind, but hey, I found one, and I'm so happy that I did.

That first thing that stood out to me most about Unwind was the way that each chapter was a different point of view. Now, this usually pisses me off, but this book was written in third person. And it was so wonderfully written in third person that I sometimes forgot that it was in third and not first person. No that says something about this book. So I can sum this point up to the writing was just marvelous, and I loved it so much. Why did this have to be so awesome? Just so, so, so awesome.

The second thing that struck me as amazing about Unwind were the characters. All of them were just so stunning, and raw, and real, and I just loved them to pieces (uh, pun not intended). Connor, Risa, Lev, Roland--they all played an important role in this book, and they all played their role well. I honestly didn't find one flat character. The character with the most personality had to be Lev though. His thoughts were just so interesting and his choices reflected the events in his life so amazingly that I just can't even deal right now. Seriously.

Connor though. He was my favorite. I don't know why, but he was such a strong character--not as strong as Lev, but near that much--and his independent nature made me like him even more. The only thing I didn't like about him was his relationship with Risa. I felt like their relationship, although not insta-love, was hashed out of necessity and not emotions. I mean, the minute he meets her, he starts having feelings for her. After he left his girlfriend, Ariana, who is a bitch, by the way. I just wasn't buying it.

And at the end, when they were making out in the bathroom stall like long lost lovers? Sorry. No. I laughed.

But obviously that wasn't too big of a deal for me. The romance wasn't a prominent point in the novel, and so it's easy for me to banish it to the back of my mind.

Something that I can't banish to the back of my mind though are the grammar mistakes throughout my printed version of Unwind. I don't know if it was just this particular print or if it's the copy editor or whatever, but I found so many errors in this book that I wanted to smash my head against my desk (I read the majority of this book at school). I am a die hard language person, and the fact that a published book had so many mistakes pissed me the fuck off.

So yeah. Other than Connor and Risa's relationship and the grammar, I loved this book so much, and I think that the five stars are well-deserved. The idea in this book is unique (to me, at least), and that's another thing that I loved about this book. I would recommend this to almost anybody. Even if you're not too keen on the whole dystopian aspect, Unwind barely feels like any of the dystopians I've read in the past. It feels real.

And I think the best--and maybe creepiest--part about Unwind is that it's so realistic that it could actually happen.

I'm just going to let you think about that for a while.

(On a somewhat more erratic note, THAT ENDING. WHAT THE HELL. WHY DID IT END LIKE THAT. WHY. NOW I NEED THE NEXT BOOK. BUT BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING. I ALSO NEED TO SAVE MY MONEY FOR BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING. I MEAN I ALREADY CAVED AND PREORDERED WORLD AFTER BUT COME ON. I CAN'T BE SPENDING ALL MY MONEY ON BOOKS BEFORE BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING. BUT OMG I NEED THE NEXT BOOK. CONNOR THOUGH. CONNOR. CONNOR. CONNOR. Okay. I'm done.)