www. susannevalenti.com

Title: Chained
Author: Susanne Valenti
Series: Cage of Lies Saga | Book 1
Pages: 313
Publisher: Susanne Valenti; 1 edition (October 1, 2015)
Rating: 4 stars

The dystopia novel, Chained, by Susanne Valenti, describes a world where fear of Contamination keeps people inside of walled cities through the perspective of Maya Summers.

Like the rest of humanity, Maya lives behind the Wall in the Guardian protected city. But she is also an orphan. She has been for awhile ever since her parents died in a fatal lab accident.

Invited to join a scientific expedition outside the Wall by her best friend, Maya’s life is turned upside down. One simple mistake sentences her and her best friend, Taylor, to a brief SubWar sentence for endangering the population.

Although Maya and Taylor are only supposed to carry messages and not engage in combat, circumstances force them to fight for their very lives. One event leads to another and soon Maya finds herself outside of the SubWar boundaries with Taylor and a mysterious stranger who rescues them along with Laurie.

Now that they’ve left, there’s no going back to the city petrified of the Contamination, which lies outside of the wall, unless, of course, they want to serve a life sentence in SubWar. And Maya will soon discover a terrifying, but releasing truth about the walled city and herself.

I received a free copy from the author in exchange for a review and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The plot’s premise first intrigued me and the genre: young adult dystopia.

With the walled city in Chained, there’s a lot of mystery surrounding it and questions. While some of them do get answered in the book, quite a few remain mysteries, which added a nice note of intrigue to the story.

The writing was also very engaging and kept me turning me pages dying to find out what happened to Maya and her friends. It also flowed very nicely and had enough description so I could easily visualize what was going on, but not too much so I was distracted by it.

Although the plot and writing were fantastic, I thought that Maya’s character could’ve developed and matured more. In my opinion, I didn’t detect a dramatic change in her character despite everything that had happened to her. However, Maya was a very likable protagonist. Another character I really liked was Laurie. She was part of the city’s law enforcement, yet she showed kindness to Maya and Taylor, which I’m curious to find out why.

Chained by Susanne Valenti is an enthralling and suspenseful young adult dystopia read with unique characters that I’d recommend to someone looking for a good dystopian novel.

Rating: Read It!-Choose It!