Jessica HickamReseñas

The Revealed by Jessica Hickam is a decent debut novel with some unexpected twists and an interesting storyline. The set up and suspense dished out at the beginning of The Revealed was some pretty high-octane stuff and I was completely immersed in the story before the end of the first chapter. There was a lot to live up to and I was anxious to see if it could be done.

Unfortunately pacing problems developed early after the stellar beginning, which seemed worse as a result of all of that promise within the first couple of chapters. The mystery behind who The Revealed are while being privy to some of their actions was wonderful but it was another huge build that was just too hard to live up to. The explanation of their identity was just not all that I was hoping for, although it wasn't crushingly disappointing.

The story takes place after a major war that forever changes the structure of the United States, although there was not the slightest hint to as why. This was not a problem for me, as I can so easily get over details like that, but I mention it here as I know that it can be a major stumbling block for some of you.

Regardless, there was still a lot to hold onto. I loved Lily's love interest, Kai. He is one of my favorite heroes in YA fiction. His appearances were less than I would have liked, but his presence was impactful and I got a real sense of who he is. Lily was likable too, it's just that I found her personality inconsistent, and had a hard time buying into her characterization, despite the fact that she was in every page.

It was the last twenty-five percent of the read that took this book that had turned lukewarm and turned it back into an exciting drama. Lily's character made some real growth towards the end as well. It is this ending, along with my love for Kai that will bring me back for more in The Enraged. Note: There is currently no expected publication date set for The Enraged (The Revealed #2).

Another cliched dystopian teen novel where everything is cliche and nothing hurts. The writing was good but the characters were flat and the story uninspiring.

Another cliched dystopian teen novel where everything is cliche and nothing hurts. The writing was good but the characters were flat and the story uninspiring.

This is a post-apocalyptic YA story about Lilith (“Lily”) Atwood, who lives in a large, well-protected house in Washington, D.C. Her father, Mark, is an important politician who now is running for president. His opponent is Roderick Westerfield, a man who used to be friends with Mark. But after the [apocalypse-causing] war in which Westerfield’s wife died, he became an embittered, vengeful man. While Lily’s father is running under the slogan “A Better Tomorrow,” Westerfield’s is “Never Again.”

Lily, like other 18-year-olds, is house-bound until after her 19th birthday. A secretive group calling themselves The Revealed have been kidnapping eighteen year olds for the past five years. None of the teens is ever seen again, so Lily is even getting home-schooled to keep her safer. In addition, the Revealed seem to have special powers. They apparently have learned how to manipulate the elements; they can move earth and create fire, wind, and water.

There is a further complication to Lily’s life. She is in love with Kai Westerfield, Roderick’s son. But their fathers are sworn enemies. And in any event, can she even survive until her birthday and the election? And what if Westerfield wins - will any of them have a future?

Discussion: Caution: Some spoilers in this section; Skip to Evaluation to Avoid Spoilers:

This plot has all kinds of problems. Neither Lily’s “instalove” with Kai, nor Kai’s apparent personality transformation are adequately explained. For that matter, the metamorphosis of Kai’s father from good family friend of the Atwoods to Evil Murdering Arch Fiend is also not realistically justified.

The whole special powers thing is totally out of nowhere. A special surgery has to be performed to enable it, but only some people have minds that are “susceptible.” If the wrong people have the surgery they could die. Therefore Revealed agents surreptitiously collect hair samples or tossed paper cups from all eighteen year olds to perform DNA sequencing in order to find potential recruits. Sound like a logistical impossibility and scientific improbability? I should note that this story doesn’t take place that far in the future, and most of the country is gone except for the East Coast, so it’s not like there are a lot of resources, or available and adequately trained manpower for expensive science research and development.

Furthermore, Lily was supposedly close to her dad, but when she tries to talk to him about the Revealed, he tries to have her locked up.

Of course, this is just the first of a series. And just in time, because a new boy has been introduced - Skylar, to help form a triangle, so all the necessary tropes are in place.

Evaluation: This book begins with an interesting premise, but as the story progressed it had too many plausibility problems for me.

I received a copy of The Revealed in exchange for an honest review.

Lily Atwood’s father is running for President of a world that’s trying to rebuild itself from the destruction in which over 5 billion people were killed. However, her mind is far from that, Lily is more worried about an organization called “The Revealed” who are kidnapping eighteen year olds and with her eighteenth birthday just around the corner, she’s ready for a fight. The thing about this organization is that the kids seem to have the ability to control the elements with a look or a snap of the fingers. As an aside, the teenage Lily and the son of her father’s opponent for President, Kai seemed way smarter than the parents and love seems to be in the air. Great characters and the author paints a vivid picture of what used to be Washington and the struggles of the inhabitants who lived there in this time. I loved this book, even though it was not my preferred genre and it was not long before I was totally engrossed and I hope that I do not have to wait long for the sequel.

Lily Atwood is eighteen. She lives a sheltered life and is under constant scrutiny. Her dad is running for President of what is left of the United States. And if that's not bad enough, she's also being threatened by an underground group called The Revealed.

Nobody really knows much about this group. Only that they kidnap eighteen-year-old kids. And the kids are never seen again. Lily has received several notes from the group stating that she's their next target.

This novel started out a little slow for me. It was about halfway through before anything really started to happen. Once things started to heat up, it was touch and go. There are several things I did like about this novel: Lily and Kai, Lily not wanting to live in a box, Lily's attitude, and most of the characters.

The story was okay. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't that great either. For me, this book didn't really distinguish itself from other dystopian novels. However not all books can be The Hunger Games or Divergent. So if dystopian novels is your bag, then you might want to give this one a go. Also The Revealed is the first book in a series. Maybe now that the groundwork has been laid things will really start to come together in the next book.

Read more at http://www.toreadornottoread.net/2014/08/review-revealed.html#uZo38VOegLOeDK7s.9...

I received a copy of The Revealed in exchange for an honest review.

Lily Atwood’s father is running for President of a world that’s trying to rebuild itself from the destruction in which over 5 billion people were killed. However, her mind is far from that, Lily is more worried about an organization called “The Revealed” who are kidnapping eighteen year olds and with her eighteenth birthday just around the corner, she’s ready for a fight. The thing about this organization is that the kids seem to have the ability to control the elements with a look or a snap of the fingers. As an aside, the teenage Lily and the son of her father’s opponent for President, Kai seemed way smarter than the parents and love seems to be in the air. Great characters and the author paints a vivid picture of what used to be Washington and the struggles of the inhabitants who lived there in this time. I loved this book, even though it was not my preferred genre and it was not long before I was totally engrossed and I hope that I do not have to wait long for the sequel.

I wasn't sure what to expect with THE REVEALED. I would say the book is split up between 3 parts, the buildup and catch up to the big kidnapping, the revealing of the organization and training, and lastly the mission that leads Lily to realize her life is forever changed.

There is a great amount of smoke and mirrors and conflict in THE REVEALED. I enjoyed the characters. Lily hated her caged life and did everything possible to get a little freedom. The world building was done really well and the action was heart pounding. I would read more.

* This book was provided free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.½

YA dystopian fiction is very popular right now. It seems to be the most common sort of YA fiction filling shelves. And it is filling them at a breakneck rate. Personally, I have read a handful of dystopian novels in the past and even a couple that were intended for a YA audience but it generally isn't a theme to which I regularly gravitate. Jessica Hickam's new novel, The Revealed, centered around the idea of an organization that takes 18 year olds and disappears with them in a future not that far off, was intriguing enough for me to pick up though.

Lily Atwood is eighteen and her father is running for President in this new world. There has been a devastating war and according to Lily, society has regressed to the nineteen twenties. Because her father is so high profile, Lily, like other wealthy eighteens, is being kept carefully protected in her home to keep her safe from the mysterious and frightening organization called The Revealed. But Lily knows all the protections that are in place are futile if The Revealed want to take her. And it would appear they do since periodically Lily finds notes taped to her windows taunting her with their plans to steal her away. Lily is terrified but other than staying close to Jeremy, her father's chief of security, there's not much she can do besides try to tamp down her constant fear and panic.

But Lily's a typical teenager and despite knowing that her seclusion in the family's mansion is for her safety, she chafes at the bonds, occasionally slipping out and trying to live a normal life. She is helped in this by her best and only friend, Rory, who works in the kitchen at the mansion, and Kai Westerfield, the son of the other Presidential candidate, a seemingly golden boy who Lily remembers as one of the thoughtless, entitled, popular boys from high school but also from way back when she was small, before the war, and the Atwood and Westerfield families were close. Just as she cannot resist escaping from her gilded cage every now and again, Lily is unable to stay away from Kai, despite the fact that she is wary of him and knows his father is not to be trusted and quite possibly evil.

Since she's certain that nothing can protect her from The Revealed, after all, they have strange abilities that make traditional protection methods completely impotent, Lily is reckless, grabbing at life while she can, always remembering that the periodic notes promise her a fate that terrifies her. She is falling for Kai, getting ever closer to him, and wanting to trust him despite his father. She feels neglected by her own father, who is so consumed by his presidential bid that he doesn't take the time to see what is going on in her life, and she has always felt merely tolerated by her mother, a woman more concerned with appearances than with her daughter's very real concerns and needs. Her self-confidence is almost nil. She is either desperately lonely or frightened most of the time so it's no surprise that she is so deeply attached to Kai and Rory very quickly. But do they have her best interests in mind?

Lily's character was a fairly surprisingly immature one. Not only is she eighteen, but she lived through a devastating war, and yet she is still very self-centered and naïve, like a significantly younger teen. For all that she claims to understand the very real danger to her and the fear it inspires in her, she sneaks out (and far too easily for the veritable fortress in which she's supposed to be living, I might add) and puts herself in situations that completely thumb her nose at the danger and fear, very contradictory attitudes within the same character. Her loyalty to her father is apparently based on nostalgia but there's not quite enough depth to her remembering to inspire this considering how dismissive he is to her throughout the novel. And there's too little of her friendship and interactions with Rory to make that a rich vein in the story. Her feelings for Kai are sweet and genuine and are as charged as any first love is.

The plot twists (and there are two) are well done and at least one of them is unexpected but definitely works to turn the story. The tension leading up to the appearance of The Revealed is a bit drawn out but clearly Hickam needed that time to build her world and given that this is only the first in an expected trilogy, it will ultimately be just a small portion of the entire story. Even with all of that world building though, there are still many instances where the reader is told what has happened in this new world but never really gets to see it. Because of this, the world doesn't really feel different from our own. Lily notes the scarcity of books and cars, the presence of genetically modified Jack-in-the-Beanstalk type crops to feed the much reduced population, the colorlessness of the factory workers, and the complete nuclear devastation of the interior of the former United States but all of these are just that, underdeveloped mere mentions. The ending wraps up a major plot issue but still feels a unfinished since it's clear that there's far more to the story, a common weakness with planned trilogies. Over all, the concept of how best to rebuild the world to benefit everyone, even if it was only touched on briefly, was interesting. The theme of struggling out from under the expectations of parents and leading a life of your own choosing is much more completely examined and Hickam does a good job handling this rite of passage. Fans of dystopian fiction will probably quite enjoy this one. I was left with a few too many questions to be completely satisfied.½

Goodreads Synopsis: Lily Atwood lives in what used to be called Washington, D.C. Her father is one of the most powerful men in the world, having been a vital part of rebuilding and reuniting humanity after the war that killed over five billion people. Now he’s running to be one of its leaders.

But in the rediscovered peace on Earth, a new enemy has risen. They call themselves the Revealed – a powerful underground organization that has been kidnapping 18 year olds across the globe without reservation. No one knows why they are kidnapping these teens, but it’s clear something is different about these people. They can set fires with a snap of their fingers and create a wind strong enough to barrel over a tree with a flick of their wrist. No one has been able to stop them, and they have targeted Lily as their next victim.

But Lily has waited too long to break free from her father’s shadow to let some rebel organization just ruin everything. Not without a fight.

Find out more about the book at www.jessicahickam.com.

My Review: First of all, I'd love to say that this book sounded so cool on netflix. I was very dissapointed in how the story was laid out, and how it flowed. To me, it seemed choppy. That might just be me, though, I don't know. I couldn't get into it, things were happening too fast.. I couldn't remember people's names, I can't tell you a thing about any of them that was significant enough for me to remember, though. Which is crazy. This book seemed like it would be perfect for me to read. It just didn't turn out so well.

And now, because I seriously can't tell you anything about this book, the review has to be short. Thanks for reading! (':

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