Book Review: The Declaration by Gemma Malley

Title: The Declaration (The Declaration Series #1)

Author: Gemma Malley

Pages: 320

Publication: October 2, 2007

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Summary taken from goodreads:

It's the year 2140 and Longevity drugs have all but eradicated old age. A never-aging society can't sustain population growth, however…which means Anna should never have been born. Nor should any of the children she lives with at Grange Hall. The facility is full of boys and girls whose parents chose to have kids—called surpluses—despite a law forbidding them from doing so. These children are raised as servants, and brought up to believe they must atone for their very existence. Then one day a boy named Peter appears at the Hall, bringing with him news of the world outside, a place where people are starting to say that Longevity is bad, and that maybe people shouldn't live forever. Peter begs Anna to escape with him, but Anna's not sure who to trust: the strange new boy whose version of life sounds like a dangerous fairy tale, or the familiar walls of Grange Hall and the head mistress who has controlled her every waking thought?

Chilling, poignant, and endlessly thought-provoking, The Declaration is a powerful debut that will have readers agonizing over Anna's fate until the very last page.

3.5 STARS - I LIKED IT

MY REVIEW:

A good beginning to a dystopian series. However, since this is a dystopian series, I was expecting more action and hoping for the beginnings of a plot to overthrow the government 'cause I'm a sucker for books with elements like those.

However, even though The Declaration didn't exactly meet those expectations, I was pleasantly surprised with the book anyway. The book focused more on character growth and Anna and Peter's escape while subtlety depicting their cruel world where being a Surplus meant being unworthy and the problems and solutions that came with living forever.

By the time I reached the end of the book, I was surprised to realize that it was over since it didn't feel like much had happened. Not like that was necessarily a bad thing; it was just that the story of their escape and Anna's revelations flowed together so well that I didn't really notice the bigger picture that the book was alluding to until the end, and it was obvious that The Declaration had to be a part of a series because there's so much that could and should happen.

Besides the great cast of characters and interesting writing style, another major factor that made me like this book was the fact that it didn't end in some huge cliffhanger meant to make readers come back for more. Instead, it mentions many loose ends and leaves some open-ended so that the reader knows that there's more to come.