Thank you to Del Rey, a Random House Publishing Group, via Netgalley for giving me an Advanced Reader Copy of Alive by Scott Sigler in exchange for an honest review.
Trigger Warning:
Violence, Blood, Murder, Stalking
A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief—she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people . . . and no answers.
She knows only one thing about herself—her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin—yet she finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them, or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her. Now, if they’re to have any chance, she must get them to trust each other.
Whatever the truth is, she is determined to find it and confront it. If she has to lead, she will make sure they survive. Maybe there’s a way out, a rational explanation, and a fighting chance against the dangers to come. Or maybe a reality they cannot comprehend lies just beyond the next turn.
Publication Date: July 14 2015.
There are spoilers in this review.
I DNF’d Alive at 82%.
What interested me in Alive the first time I came across this novel was the cover. I didn’t think too much of it and then I requested the book. I requested Alive back in ’15 when I first signed up for Netgalley and went a little over board with all the books I had requested.
Having read the synopsis though, I genuinely became re-interested in this book. I like that there’s mentionings of getting out of a coffin that the main character is stuck in, that’s mentioned in the synopsis. I had this huge inkling that Alive wasn’t about vampires, but one could hope! I mean, it’s not everyday you read a book where a character has to bust out of a coffin.
However, I knew that when I finished reading the synopsis that Alive is a YA Dystopian. I was looking forward to reading Alive and not only getting to know the main character, but to read how the story plays out as well.
What happened at the beginning of this book was tremendously interesting. …..And then the story went downhill.
Right when the book starts we find out how old the main character is. Actually, we find out a lot within the first chapter: she doesn’t know her name, but we know it’s her 12th birthday when she wakes in the coffin. We know that something is trying to slither it’s way into the side of her neck, that she eventually kills. She makes her way out of the coffin. In the process of the main character escaping we find that she’s been trained for something, and that she’s unusually strong. — And that is all in the first chapter. So I had no idea how the story would progress. I had no idea what would happen.
I DNF’d Alive at 82%. I would have DNF’d it around 60% but I read a little more and something became more interesting. However, most of the story is just static. We’re given little tidbits of the story to make the reader read more. For a while that worked. Until it didn’t. Nearing the halfway point of this book I found that my feelings toward Alive took a turn for the worse. I wasn’t enjoying the Savage’s story as much as I had wanted to, so I knew that there was a high chance that I wouldn’t end up finishing Alive.
A good thing about Alive is that the story plot is insanely fast and kept me entertained. I also like that there’s some diversity among the characters in Alive.
My final thoughts on Alive are that I thought that I would end up liking Alive. I sincerely thought that I would enjoy Savage’s story. It turns out that yes, I did enjoy some things in this book. However, there are too many other factors in this book that make me not want to finish Savage’s story.
I had immensely high hopes for Alive, and what I read couldn’t even begin to meet my expectations.
I give Alive, 1.5 stars.
Happy Reading!
— Adele
Adele Is Reading 
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