On the island of Nil, the rules are set. You have exactly 365 days to escape—or you die.
Rives is now the undisputed Leader of Nil City, but keeping the City united is tougher than ever.
Raiders have grown bolder, supplies are dwindling, and non-human inhabitants have taken a turn toward the deadly. New arrivals cause rifts within the City, putting the Search system at risk, and calling everything Rives knows into question. Desperate for answers, he teams up with the only other person searching for them: Skye, a new arrival with a mysterious past of her own. Soon the duo find themselves locked in a desperate race to save all the residents of Nil—and possibly destroy the island forever. But at what cost? And who will pay the price?
Description taken from Goodreads. I received an advance copy of this book, to be published May 12th, 2015, in exchange for an honest review. These opinions are my own.
I wasn’t the hugest fan of NIL. Sure, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t entirely my thing. Just to list a few reasons, I felt like the book wasn’t serious enough for kids stuck on an island they will probably die on, there was a lot of instalove going on and I felt like Charley and Thad were basically fangirling over each other’s presence all the time.
I won’t say, necessarily, that the fangirling thing disappears in NILU, but I will say that I think NILU is significantly better than NIL. Like I said in my Once Upon A Gif review, 60 pages in I was pretty sure that NILU was going to be a rerun of NIL and I was stuck going to be disappointed.
But then Charley comes back, and Skye gets this huge motivation to go to NIL and free the rest of the kids there. That’s when things really get kicked into full gear. I will say it takes a little bit of time for the book to start up, but in that time you get to really see things from Rives’ POV and exactly how different they are. I appreciated both the time before and after the pace starts speeding up, but I was really glad to see the turn that NILU makes.
And it’s a creepy one.
NIL UNLOCKED is a lot different from NIL. For me, mostly because of how the nature of the island seems to change because of the way we’re now in Rives’ point of view. There are a lot of secrets about the island that come out even before or during the time Skye gets to NIL. It’s refreshing to see and it brings out the parts to the island that a lot of reviewers, including me, thought were missing in the first book. As you go along, NIL UNLOCKED gets more and more action packed, exciting and convoluted.
I loved it.
What I didn’t love a lot of the time was Skye. Well, I did, but she has this tendency to act like she always knows what’s going on, and that gets irritating after awhile. And like I said, fangirling, but I still loved Rives and Skye together and I was really happy to see Rives get together with someone after losing all the people that he did. It was great for him to finally find his own peace and happiness, and I felt like that was Skye for him. I loved their relationship and watching it grow throughout their time on NIL.
If you were disappointed with NIL or you enjoyed it, either way I would recommend that you read this story (if you want to get your heart ripped out at the end). Feelers, beware. This book has got another thing coming to you. 4.3 stars.
pg count for the hardback: 432
