Perfect Ruin, Lauren DeStefano

My first ARC! Woo-hoo!

On Internment, the floating island in the clouds where 16-year-old Morgan Stockhour lives, getting too close to the edge can lead to madness. Even though Morgan's older brother, Lex, was a Jumper, Morgan vows never to end up like him. She tries her best not to mind that her life is orderly and boring, and if she ever wonders about the ground, and why it is forbidden, she takes solace in best friend Pen and her betrothed, Basil. 

Then a murder, the first in a generation, rocks the city. With whispers swirling and fear on the wind, Morgan can no longer stop herself from investigating, especially when she meets Judas. He is the boy being blamed for the murder — betrothed to the victim — but Morgan is convinced of his innocence. Secrets lay at the heart of Internment, but nothing can prepare Morgan for what she will find — or who she will lose.

So this was my first, actual hard-copy ARC. I've gotten digitals before but boy-oh-boy this was exciting. I got it through GoodReads' win-an-ARC thing, I think. I don't know for sure though. There were no pieces of paper explaining anything, just a little flyer for a website called pulseit.com, which I think is kind of like goodreads.com? I haven't really checked it out yet. I mean, I did, but I didn't have a chance to look very far.

Anyways, I got this one in the mail. Exciting.

I'd never read any books by Lauren DeStefano before, I'd heard some things about another series of hers, but this one was great. Fabulous. I need the second one, NOW. Although I'm guessing the second one will be mostly focused on another group of people even though I've fallen in love with the characters in this one! Help!

Well the setting is in the present, I'm guessing, I don't actually know. I guess it could be in the future. But it's not on earth. Not exactly. It's on Internment and like the description above says, Internment is a floating island. In the sky. They have all the stuff we have like trains and flower shops and apartments but it's just all in the sky. Alright, I guess. Interesting concept, right? That's what I thought.

So anyways the main character is Morgan Stockhour and she's--well, I don't know. Usually I say the main character is brave or funny or relatable, but I just finished the book and I honestly do not remember a thing about her personality. I really don't want to have to say she was underdeveloped as a character, but I guess if the shoe fits . . . Oh gosh, I really do not want to say that! I really loved the book, but Morgan was just blah. Towards the end of the book, you learn she's a good-hearted person but only because another character says it and points it out multiple times. The other characters kind of cover up out her no-personality personality anyways. You don't notice it while you're reading though. There's so much going on, it never affected the book. Just a little hard to describe the character when there's nothing there.

The next character is Pen. Or, um, Margaret. Her name is Margaret. She's called Pen though, so we'll stick with Pen. Pen's got a personality! Woo-hoo! I liked Pen for most of the book. She's like an actual teenage girl. I mean, she is a teenager. What was I saying? Oh right, Pen is very realistic. She rolls her eyes and makes faces at people when she doesn't like them. I don't know if other people do that. I do. Pen is me. I am Pen.

Creepy.

The next two characters are almost equally matched so I just explain who they are and why they're even in the story. In Internment, people are chosen to get married. The King pairs them up, or the King's government system-thing does. But yeah. No one is able to love anyone but their betrothed. That's what they're called. Their betrothed. And Basil and Thomas are Morgan and Pen's to-be-husbands, respectively. So Thomas and Basil are equally matched for main-character-ness, except I guess Basil a little more than Thomas, so never mind. They're not completely equal.

Any-hoo, despite Morgan's personality being MIA, the book was great. Great concept, great characters (there are more main characters that I cannot say because of spoilers), and great setting-explaining. I've always wondered how authors can make up whole worlds, even if Internment is quite like our own, it still has things that are very different that I would not have been able to explain as clearly as DeStefano did.

I think, if I hadn't gotten this book as an ARC, I would have gone out and bought it. Or at least put it on my Christmas list. It just sounds intriguing, right?

OH RIGHT. It comes out October 1st, if you're wondering.