Under The Mountain

Weighing in at 400 pages. I was expecting Adaptation to feel pretty slow. However, I started it before I went to bed and before I knew it I'd already read 30%. I finished the rest when I woke up. Adaptation is... amazing. I have all the praise for a bisexual main character, finally! I feel represented and stuff. The story itself made for compulsive reading, I never once felt bored and that's probably why I read the whole thing so quickly, or at least it felt like I did.

The book was really well paced. It never felt too slow or had too much going on. The accident doesn't happen for a few chapters, which meant that we got to know and care about the main character. After she's released home it feels a little more contemporary as she met and fell in love with Amber and then became suffocatingly scary during the second half of the book and major events happened.

I loved the relationships between Reese and all the other characters. Her Dad sucks but who needs him when her mother loves her so much? They have an easy, almost sibling like relationship that came across beautifully. The romance between Reese and Amber was perfect. They fell in love quickly but it never came across as forced, just a normal teenage relationship without any of the unusual insta-love words. Her relationship and crush on David was very different as David had a different personality to Amber and Reese had known him a lot longer. I think this makes for a very unique, unusual love triangle and I'm curious to find out what will happen in the next book with that.

The science fiction elements were really interesting throughout, from Government cover ups to alien conspiracy theories from Reese's best friend, Julian. Who's gay, by the way. Important. Reese doesn't wake up and find she has a robot leg or anything, it's not that heavy. But she is having weird dreams and her scars from the accident are rapidly healing, which the US Government are very interested in. The story does end on a cliff hanger but not as bad as Catching Fire or anything. I'm really excited to continue the story though!