ISAN Review (Reviewer Copy)

    After the world as we know it was destroyed by meteors, adjustments were made to help the survivors. The U.S. separated and became four quadrants- North, South, East, and West- governed by The Remnant Council. Ava is simply trying to survive when she winds up in juvenile detention. While there, she gets offered an opportunity to join ISAN, the International Sensory Assassin Network. However, in order to do  this she has to agree to injections of a serum that is supposed to make her better, but that is still under testing. She agrees and begins her training. Eventually, she and her team go on a mission, but while on it, she gets kidnapped by a group whose goal is to destroy ISAN. While there, their leader, Rhett, tells Ava that she knows him and in fact has a history with the entire group. He claims that everything she remembers is made up of lies ISAN created to control her. ava must decide is she will trust Rhett and the strange feelings she gets while with him or if she will go back to the organization that is everything she remembers.

   Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinion. This review is only my opinion, and you may have your own, different one. I would take into consideration what I say, but do not make a decision about the book solely based off of this review. Additionally, the author sent me this book as a free review copy; however, this did not influence my review. This is 100% my honest opinion. Let's begin:

    If you have read my other reviews or have checked out my Instagram, you most likely have caught on to the fact that I'm a huge fantasy person. I've read a few sci-fi books, but not a ton. I enjoyed the ones I have read, but not necessarily enough to get me to look into sci-fi more. I think this book might change that. I loved it so much that I didn't realize how much I was reading at one time. I looked at the bottom of my Kindle and it went from 5% progress to 40% in what felt like 5 minutes of reading.

    I think that the plot is very interesting. I liked the idea of the serum and the different things it can do to people. I am also super intrigued by the idea of Ava potentially not remembering everything about her past and why/how this might have happened; I am certainly looking forward to finding out more about that in the next book. The plot in general kept me invested in the book the entire time. I was never bored and found myself wanting to keep reading even when I knew I had to stop to sleep or get work done. Like I said before, I didn't even realize how much I was reading because I was enjoying it so much. Also, the action sequences were super cool and well written!

    I really liked all of the characters. Ava is a great protagonist, and I love how there are so many morally grey characters. A lot of the characters were difficult to figure out (and I honestly still haven't figured them out) because you, like Ava, can't tell who to trust or who knows what information. This is a great technique that really puts you into the book and makes you relate to the main character, and I adore that the author wrote the book in this way. Rhett was a great character and I loved how I got the same sense as Ava on the matter of not knowing him, but still feeling like I maybe can trust him. All of the characters were well developed and I loved them all (even the ones whose personalities I didn't like). I'm excited to see how they develop more in the next book, and I have a feeling some of the characters who are sort of smaller in this first book are going to be bigger later. 

    The world's differences from the world that we know in real life were shown slowly. It did not play a super major part in the first half of the book, but still did have an impact in a lot of ways. It became bigger later in the book, and because of this, it was discussed more there. I don't think that the wait to start developing the world in a less subtle way hindered the reading experience at all though. In fact, I actually liked how it was done because it made me more curious about it and excited to learn more in the next book.

    Overall, I loved the book and would very highly suggest giving it a try even if you are not sure sci-fi is your thing because this book may just change your mind on that. The plot was extremely interesting, the characters were well developed, and I really liked the way the world is set up. I'm not sure how to convey how much or why I enjoyed a book when I loved it as much as I loved this one. I simply get this feeling when reading it that I cannot put into words. Hopefully you either know what I am talking about when I say 'feeling' or I did a good enough job that you can tell exactly how much I enjoyed this read and how highly I recommend you giving it a chance.

    Thank you so much to Mary Ting and Angie from the Instagram page @marytingnews for the copy of this book!

Rating: 5/5 stars

Author: Mary Ting

Publisher: Vesuvian Books

# of Pages: 333 (Kindle edition)

Genre: YA, Sci-fi

Series: International Sensory assassin Network (Book 1)