Under The Never Sky by Veronica Rossi Series: Under the Never Sky #1
Published by HarperCollins on January 3rd, 2012
Genres: Dystopian, YA
Goodreads
WORLDS KEPT THEM APART.
DESTINY BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER.
Aria has lived her whole life in the protected dome of Reverie. Her entire world confined to its spaces, she's never thought to dream of what lies beyond its doors. So when her mother goes missing, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland long enough to find her are slim.
Then Aria meets an outsider named Perry. He's searching for someone too. He's also wild - a savage - but might be her best hope at staying alive.
If they can survive, they are each other's best hope for finding answers.
I hate writing these kinds of reviews because it’s so hard to properly articulate the complete feeling of “meh” I’m having right now. Like the rest of the world I’ve heard every piece of hype and propaganda for Under the Never Sky. This is the exact reason why I waited over a year before I started it! I wanted the excitement to die down so that it wouldn’t cloud my judgement. Apparently a year wasn’t long enough because I still had high hopes for it. Too bad my hopes never came to fruition.
Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t a bad story, not at all to be honest. Our main characters Aria and Perry were fairly pleasant to read about and the world building was efficient. But I was never truly gripped by what was happening.
The story starts off slowly, which I was ok with, and begins to gain a very intense and swift momentum. We get to see what happens to the human brain when cut off from reality (not a good thing), we experience fire and fear for the first time, and we are exiled from the only home we’ve ever known. It was really gripping and thought provoking.
Well at least for the first 60 or so pages after that it pretty much slows down quite a bit.
We get to go on this “journey” with Aria and Perry, across a land left barren due to aether storms. We face cannibals, storms that level villages, and fear that has never been felt before. You would think all of that would equal an exciting and gripping book but the way everything happened I was more like “oh, so this is happening. Ok then.” I was never gasping at the “events” or “revelations”. I wasn’t excited, or hopeful or even nervous; which are all the feelings this book should have brought on. Instead I was just sitting on my couch reading words on a page.
I did appreciate Rossi’s needs to build the emotions between Aria and Perry, and the fact that they never said the word “love” but portrayed that via their actions made me smile. For that reason alone I would suggest it to other readers, but more so as a library pick up, because 17.99 is just too much for a “meh” read to me.
