daynight by Megan Thomason
Meet The Second Chance Institute (SCI): Earth’s benevolent non-profit by day, Thera’s totalitarian regime by night. Their motto: Because Everyone Deserves a Second Chance™. Reality: the SCI subjects Second Chancers to strict controls and politically motivated science experiments like Cleaving—forced lifetime union between two people who have sex.
Meet Kira Donovan. Fiercely loyal, overly optimistic, and ensnared by the promise of a full-ride college scholarship, Kira signs the SCI Recruit contract to escape memories of a tragedy that left her boyfriend and friends dead.
Meet Blake Sundry. Bitter about being raised in Exile and his mother’s death, Blake’s been trained to infiltrate and destroy the SCI. Current barrier to success? His Recruit partner—Miss Goody Two Shoes Kira Donovan.
Meet Ethan Darcton. Born with a defective heart and resulting inferiority complex, Ethan’s forced to do his SCI elite family’s bidding. Cleave-worthy Kira Donovan catches his eye, but the presiding powers give defect-free Blake Sundry first dibs.
Full of competing agendas, romantic entanglements, humor, twists and turns, daynight is Megan Thomason’s debut young adult dystopian novel and first in the daynight series.
My Thoughts on Daynight:
I was instantly hooked to Daynight. There were aspects of the story I found confusing, like what exactly the people of Thera were, were they aliens, super humans, angels, etc. Not knowing this in the beginning really helped to hold my attention as I was determined to figure it out. I also found the idea of an opposite Earth really intriguing and it put a unique spin on this story, which does have many similarities to other popular novels being published for Young Adult readers.
There were some things in the book I found took away from my overall enjoyment of the novel. Cleaving, the Therian equivalate of sex and marriage, is extremely important to the society on Earth’s sister planet. But EVERYONE was talking about it ALL THE TIME. “Have you guys cleaved yet” “He’d/She’d make a great cleave” “I think we will cleave tonight” etc etc etc. While it never got more graphic then innuendos and the constant mention of cleaving, I still got pretty tired of it. I found myself thinking ‘cant you guys talk about anything else?!?’
Like Twilight, Matched, and Hunger Games, this dystopian fiction has a confusing and heart wrenching love triangle. There will definitely be teams in the crowds. Wearing shirts and pledging their allegiance. As the Kira/Blake/Ethan love triangle is another central theme in the story I struggled at times.
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