The Raging Ones (The Raging Ones #1) by Krista Ritchie and Becca Ritchie
ARC received from the publisher for a fair review.
Publication date: 8/14/2018
In a world where everyone knows the day they will die, society is dominated by the Influentials, those who will live the longest. But when three teens dodge their death days they must hide their secret and flee to save the new life they have been granted.
The Story
While the story starts off running, I found it hard to really get into the book. Told from alternating points of view, we are given a story about 3 kids that don’t die when they’re supposed to. In a reaction to evading their death day, the characters found themselves emotionally linked, and so the story continues as they learn to trust each other and deal with what they are going to do to survive. Because now that they don’t know their death day, they are seemingly vulnerable to everything. And if anyone found out their secret they believe that they will be condemned or researched upon to find out how others can dodge their death days.
After the initial introduction of the world and the characters I felt like the story lagged in the middle as they worked on their goal to get off planet. For me, it felt like just a bunch of character development. The biggest saving grace for me was the twists at the end. There is some stuff happen that I really didn’t see happening, but really liked.
Trigger Warnings: attempted murder, violence
The World Building
The world building in this was quite unique, and just the tiniest bit confusing. In a seemingly futuristic world we find that technology advancement has come to a halt as the world spent it’s time working on keeping people fed after some great natural freezing disaster. The world is familiar, yet different.
What I really liked was the social classes. Having Babes, Fasttrackers, and Influentials was unique and tied in really well with the story. I liked how it spread from there into having Wonders and the differences in their last names. However, I only caught the reasoning for Icecastle and ‘fall, the rest fell under the radar to having any special significance besides, everyone’s being ‘castle.
The Characters
Mykal is a total little cinnamon roll. I just adore this giant teddy bear of a guy so much. Franny was a tough little cookie, but she was sort of annoying and I felt that I didn’t really get to know much about Court till the end, and therefore didn’t really connect with the guy. But really, Mykal is the type of friend you want by your side.
I was really happy to know that having the 2 male characters and the 1 female character didn’t lead to a love triangle, and honestly revolved mostly on the friendship bond that they were creating through their emotional link. It was a unique take since they could each feel each other and were ultimately concerned for each other in every way possible, down to whether or not what they ate would make someone else gag from the taste.
Soundtrack
M.I.A. – Bad Girls
