(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

For fans of The Maze Runner and The 5th Wave, this debut YA novel from Hugo Award-winner Will McIntosh pits four teens against an evil billionaire in the race of a lifetime. Sully is a sphere dealer at a flea market. It doesn't pay much - Alex Holliday's stores have muscled out most of the independent sellers - but it helps him and his mum make the rent. No one knows where the brilliant-coloured spheres came from. One day they were just there, hidden all over the earth like huge gemstones. Burn a pair and they make you a little better: an inch taller, skilled at maths, better-looking. The rarer the sphere, the greater the improvement - and the more expensive the sphere. When Sully meets Hunter, a girl with a natural talent for finding spheres, the two start searching together. What they find will change more than just their lives . . . Because the entire world fights over spheres, but no one knows why they're here or what their powers are . . . until now.

Two stars may seem a bit harsh for a story that a lot of people seem to have liked. But, you know, this is YA - and in the lower scales of YA, not the top shelf.

What began as a great promise soon became a-typical YA fiction - good guy vs bad guy, romantic interest, some hidden powers and BANG! you have yourself a YA novel...

To get to the crux of the matter, this felt like a mash up of "Ready Player One" and "Pokémon" - might be good for middle grade kids, but I don't think it really sits too high in the YA ranks, in my opinion only, of course!


Paul
ARH