Reboot by Amy Tintera ~ The Reader Lines

Sep 14, 2015

Reboot by Amy Tintera

My rating: 3 stars.

Summary:

Five years ago, Wren Connolly was shot three times in the chest. After 178 minutes she came back as a Reboot: stronger, faster, able to heal, and less emotional. The longer Reboots are dead, the less human they are when they return. Wren 178 is the deadliest Reboot in the Republic of Texas. Now seventeen years old, she serves as a soldier for HARC (Human Advancement and Repopulation Corporation).

Wren’s favorite part of the job is training new Reboots, but her latest newbie is the worst she’s ever seen. As a 22, Callum Reyes is practically human. His reflexes are too slow, he’s always asking questions, and his ever-present smile is freaking her out. Yet there’s something about him she can’t ignore. When Callum refuses to follow an order, Wren is given one last chance to get him in line—or she’ll have to eliminate him. Wren has never disobeyed before and knows if she does, she’ll be eliminated, too. But she has also never felt as alive as she does around Callum.

The perfect soldier is done taking orders.

***

The first time I read the synopsis of Reboot, it was because of the Spanish release, and I found it so original and badass that I couldn’t help but to order my ebook copy and started reading it as soon as I could.

I was promised a zombie-like, Robocop-like story that sounded like everything I needed to go back to the dystopian field.

And the first chapter was as amazing as expected, the second one was just as great, but when the “love interest” appeared I don’t know what happened to me, but I somehow lost my excitement.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy stories with a badass girl and a kind of fragile boy. It’s not that I didn’t like those characters: It was that I didn’t appreciate how Wren changed when she met Callum.

It wasn’t insta-love, but Wren One-seventy-eight started so strong and cold. She was truly badass, without much feelings and zero drama. But as soon as Callum appeared, all her world centered on him.

I know it was supposed to be that way. I know that Callum was the reason she started questioning her life and the way Reboots were treated. I know he was the changing factor.

But… I don’t know, I guess in dystopian books I don’t get a story where the romance is the reason behind a rebellion. And at the same time I know it’s what makes Reboot different from other dystopian books: that the main character wasn’t fighting to change the world, to protect her fellows. She was fighting to protect just one person.

This might sound good for some readers, but I didn’t enjoy it. The idea of the Reboots was so freaking remarkable that with a few twists and turns it could’ve been perfect.

Sadly, for me it felt straightforward and predictable.

Meet the boy. Find a way to escape. Escape. That’s all.

While I did not love Reboot, I can’t say the book wasn’t good. It was. It had good characters, an amazing world building and it was well written.

But it was not for me.