Resist

Resist (Breathe #2)

by Sarah Crossan

2.5 stars

368 pages

Published Oct. 8, 2013 by Greenwillow Books

I'm being very generous with the 2.5 star rating. I really wanted to give it a 2-star, but the ending was happy-ish, and you know how much I like happy endings.

The reasons for my "meh" inclinations are many:

1. Too many main characters. It took me half the book to actually figure out what was going on and who was who again. I had read the first book, Breathe, when it first came out and got this one as soon as I could, but it was tough for me to remember exactly who everyone was - there were way too many main characters to make the sequel easy to read. It it did not help that each chapter was from the viewpoint of each of those multiple characters. It was so hard to keep track!

2. Too many loose ends. What happened to Niamh? The other members of the Ministry? The other members of Sequoia? Or Vanya? What were the oxyboxes?

3. The writing was blah. There was also some swearing, supposedly to add some spice to the bland writing.

4. The characters were blah. Nobody grew much really. All that apparently happened in the first book. This book was not character driven at all. It was all focused on ...

5. The plot, which was also blah. Overthrow the Ministry. Start growing plants. Booooring.

6. There needed to be an Epilogue - from at least 20 years in the future - so we the readers could see how everything turned out and how the environment had changed.

So all in all, a solid blah effort.