Review: The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee
The Thousandth Floor
Author: Katharine McGee
Series: The Thousandth Floor #1
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: August 30th 2016
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Contemporary
Pages: 448
Format: ARC
Source: Gift from a friend who got it at BEA
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Goodreads
New York City as you’ve never seen it before. A thousand-story tower stretching into the sky. A glittering vision of the future, where anything is possible—if you want it enough.
Welcome to Manhattan, 2118.
A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. But people never change: everyone here wants something…and everyone has something to lose.
Leda Cole’s flawless exterior belies a secret addiction—to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched.
Eris Dodd-Radson’s beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart.
Rylin Myers’s job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world—and a romance—she never imagined…but will her new life cost Rylin her old one?
Watt Bakradi is a tech genius with a secret: he knows everything about everyone. But when he’s hired to spy by an upper-floor girl, he finds himself caught up in a complicated web of lies.
And living above everyone else on the thousandth floor is Avery Fuller, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all—yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have.
Debut author Katharine McGee has created a breathtakingly original series filled with high-tech luxury and futuristic glamour, where the impossible feels just within reach. But in this world, the higher you go, the farther there is to fall….(Cover and synopsis from Goodreads.)
FTC Disclaimer: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Elephant in the Room…
Okay, so first things first, let’s get this out in the open: there is incest in The Thousandth Floor. Not incest with a blood sibling, but with a girl and her adopted brother. So not so bad, right? Well, they grew up basically their entire lives as siblings, so that’s still crossing into incest territory for me. I can’t remember if they actually had sex or if they just kissed, but still. GROSS.
BUT let me just say that I enjoyed the rest of The Thousandth Floor. I didn’t enjoy that specific relationship at all, but I enjoyed the rest of the book. And a friend of mine reminded me of another incestuous couple in a series I enjoy: Cersei and Jaime Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire. I don’t like their relationship (I really hate it, tbh) but I LOVE that series. So I realized that usually I think of incest as a deal breaker, but I can’t deny that there are books that I love that have that aspect in them. So I’m going to treat The Thousandth Floor the same way, and just say that I did NOT like that relationship, but I enjoyed the rest. And it’s okay for me to still like the book.
A Couple Other Issues…
I did have other issues with the book as well, like the fact that I got a couple of the characters confused quite often, making me think that maybe one or the other of them wasn’t necessary. But as the story went on, they developed more into their own, unique characters, but there were still a couple times when I forgot which one I was reading about (because there are several different P.O.V.s in this book). Maybe if they had been really distinct from the beginning I wouldn’t have had such a hard time telling them apart.
I also didn’t like how the prologue is a flash forward, but then we don’t catch up to that time until almost the very end of the book. I wanted it to happen like halfway through so we could get more of the aftermath. But I know that this is the first book in a series, so the rest of the books will focus on the aftermath.
Overall, a Fun Read…
I love New York City and I love futuristic books and movies, and the plot for The Thousandth Floor is just such a cool one. A huge, 2 1/2 mile tall sky scraper in NYC that stretches from 42nd street to 145th? How cool is that? I need a blueprint and some artist renderings of what this tower would look like, inside and out, STAT. And all the tech and gadgets that are in this book were just so cool. It reminded me of Gossip Girl, Wall-E, the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld (especially Pretties), and the TV show Ascension (even though I haven’t finished that series yet). And lots of sci-fi that I’ve read and watched over the years.
So even though there was that one relationship that I didn’t like (AT ALL), I did really enjoy The Thousandth Floor overall. If you like sci-fi and Gossip Girl, you should give it a try. I know I’ll definitely be reading the sequel when it comes out.
Andrea
*A note about my FTC Disclaimer, above: This book was technically a gift given to me by a fellow book blogger who picked it up at Book Expo America. So I didn’t get it directly from the publisher but I wanted to include my FTC Disclaimer because it is an ARC.
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