Review: The Ward

The Ward by Jordana Frankel

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: April 30th 2013
Pages: 384
Source: Ebook For Review From Publisher
Genre: Dystopian, Magical Realism/Paranormal, Romance
Goodreads

Sixteen-year-old Ren is a daredevil mobile racer who will risk everything to survive in the Ward, what remains of a water-logged Manhattan. To save her sister, who is suffering from a deadly illness thought to be caused by years of pollution, Ren accepts a secret mission from the government: to search for a freshwater source in the Ward, with the hope of it leading to a cure.

However, she never expects that her search will lead to dangerous encounters with a passionate young scientist; a web of deceit and lies; and an earth-shattering mystery that’s lurking deep beneath the water’s rippling surface.

The Ward was a book I knew very little about when I started reading. Pretty much my expectations were based on the cover and I was very surprised in the end. The ward had it's goods and bad parts, in the end, this is going to end up a mostly negative review.

In general, the writing didn't really captivate me. The writing style seemed to go back and forth in this story, some parts were written the way the character thought and spoke, a more 'slang' version of English I suppose. When the book suddenly broke out into this 'slang' version of speaking, I was often caught off guard because the writing style was not consistent. The book would go between slang and formal English and it really bugged me.

This book was quite confusing in general. While I was reading I often did not know exactly what was going on. There would be points in which she was doing *insert random action here* and then all of a sudden it was like she was doing something else. I have no idea why this was happening, it might have been me, but because it happened  multiple times, I highly doubt that. There are also major parts in this book that take place in a futuristic type of car thing (I know, really descriptive Erika) and I could never tell exactly what they drove on. It seemed like at times they would be like boats on the water, and then I thought that they were underwater, and then the seemed like hover cars or roof jumping cars I HAVE NO CLUE, I'll just leave it at that. 

There are several instances of Magical Realism in this story, and some of them edge more to the Paranormal genre. I'm really not a big fan of Magical realism, I just can't get into it and I find it really weird in any book.

I know I really haven't written anything about any of the characters yet, but I really don't feel like I connected with any of them enough for me to want to write about them. The only character I really had much of an opinion about was Derek. For some of the book I was just 'eh' about him, and then when he started to have a bigger role I was just confused about where he stood. He was in and out, up and down and pretty much just a very confusing character.

Are you ready for my praises for this book? Of course you are. Despite all the 'eh' I felt for this book, there were some REALLY good lines in this book. Like- quotable quotes. I would share them for you but I'd have to compare them to a final copy and I don't have one of those at the moment. Maybe one day.