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My Review:Title: Qualify
Author: Vera Nazarian
Series: The Atlantis Grail #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: December 20, 2014
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 600
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Dystopian
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2019 AtoZ Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 Dystopia Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER With Friends
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:
Blurb:
You have two options. You die, or you Qualify.
The year is 2047. An extinction-level asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, and the descendants of ancient Atlantis have returned from the stars in their silver ships to offer humanity help.
But there's a catch.
They can only take a tiny percent of the Earth's population back to the colony planet Atlantis. And in order to be chosen, you must be a teen, you must be bright, talented, and athletic, and you must Qualify.
Sixteen-year-old Gwenevere Lark is determined not only to Qualify but to rescue her entire family.
Because there's a loophole.
If you are good enough to Qualify, you are eligible to compete in the brutal games of the Atlantis Grail, which grants all winners the laurels, high tech luxuries, and full privileges of Atlantis Citizenship. And if you are in the Top Ten, then all your wildest wishes are granted... Such as curing your mother's cancer.
There is only one problem.
Gwen Lark is known as a klutz and a nerd. While she's a hotshot in classics, history, science, and languages, the closest she's come to sports is a backyard pool and a skateboard.
This time she is in over her head, and in for a fight of her life, against impossible odds and world-class competition--including Logan Sangre, the most amazing guy in her school, the one she's been crushing on, and who doesn't seem to know she exists.
Because every other teen on Earth has the same idea.
You Qualify or you die
.
3.5 stars — Well hmmm… The first (at least) 1/3 of this book was BORING as all get out. I wasn’t grabbed AT ALL, I didn’t connect with any of the characters, and nothing interesting happened (just a lot of detailed description of every single day). I was seriously starting to wonder why my friends had recommended this book. If it hadn’t been for that recommendation, I would have FOR SURE DNF’d it. But then, *finally*, there was a major inciting incident, and the plot drew me in and kept me fairly enthralled.
Normally I love books for characters — and that’s where this book lost so many points with me. I wasn’t invested in Gwen at all. She wasn’t that likable IMO. She’s a geek who makes a comment or two about how gross another geek is (1st kiss being one example)…that was just weird to me. Her entire dealings with Blayne Dubois made me cringe as much as it made him cringe. She’s a little bit too teacher’s pet for me sometimes (even though, I was probably like that to a certain degree). I don’t know…she was just very young I guess.
I did appreciate her fervent need to help others and stand up for them, especially when they needed and wanted that help. I loved that she had a bit of a self-sacrificing thing going on, it felt genuine. I appreciated the cleverness we got to see a lot of in the semi-finals. And I even appreciated her inability to stay quiet in the face of injustice…my only problem with that aspect is how her internal thoughts always made it out to be a compulsion, like she wasn’t in control. I didn’t quite understand the purpose of that. I would have appreciated it more if she’d owned it.
As for the rest of the characters? There were a TON of them, and thus I didn’t really connect with any of them. I was only meh on her crush/romance with Logan…he was a bit too good to be true. I thought her friendship with Laronda was too easy and unremarkable. She made a lot of very shallow connections with a lot of other characters, but not enough for me to really get to know them. As for her family? They were kind of fun, especially George and Gordie. They sounded like typical brothers. Gracie was annoying as all get out, but that seemed appropriate for her age and personality.
So what kept me reading all 600 pages of this book then? It was definitely the plot and the intrigue surrounding the incident, and then the semi-finals themselves were seriously exciting. I don’t want to give spoilers, so I can’t go into things, but I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what everyone was thinking, what the secrets were, what was going to happen next. I was super happy about some things, and kind of meh on others. I was a bit bummed with the finals — they were a serious let down as a competition, and it truly made me question the purpose of the qualifications and who would qualify. In some ways it wasn’t the best and the brightest, it was the most ruthless and the lucky.
I also really appreciated the lore and world development surrounding the Atlanteans, their tech, the weird sound stuff, etc. It was unique, and I appreciated that (even if sometimes I had to suspend my disbelief).
Am I curious about what’s going to happen next in this series? Heck yes! Am I willing to invest in 500+ pages for book 2 and 900+ pages for book 3, and who knows how long the series is going to go in book 4? Eh. The problem is that this author needs an editor in the worst way. If there was a Cole’s Notes edition of this series, I would be all over it in a heartbeat. But as it stands? I’m probably going to be lazy and see if I can get someone to give me a condensed version. Bad reader, right? It would have been different if I liked any of the characters more than just meh…but I just didn’t.
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