Actual Rating: 3.80 
 I will be honest and say I was very hesitant to pick this book up because of the mixed reviews, but because the second book has such great buzz I decided to go ahead and this book a try. So despite all my hesitation and skepticism I did end up enjoying this book. 
 I will agree with others when they say this book is similar to the movie National Treasure. I found this part of the book to be very adventurous and fun. Also, this book deals with a secret society that pretty much controls the world; The Circle. I give Maggie Hall mad props for the pure genius put into the story and the amount of detail she went through to create this secret society. It was so much fun seeing Avery discover so much hidden history. Another thing that I really enjoyed was the pure danger and ruthlessness in the characters and world Avery finds herself in. She gets a not-so-pretty picture into a world she blindly jumped head first into and finds herself in danger surrounded by killing, death, and an earth shattering revelation that will forever change her world. 
 I didn't much care for Avery's character. I found her to be naive to just run off with guys she didn't know to meet a family she really doesn't know. She was in too deep and way over her head. The things she was subjected to was a cold reality shock. So she was a bit annoying because of all these things because she was just so naive. I did like Jack, but I just didn't love him for some reason. Stellan was my favorite person in this book. Yes, he was a jerk and did some not nice things that made me want to ring his neck. What I did like is that he was very smooth, but could also be deadly. He could see right through Avery and called her out on it. While he wasn't necessarily friendly to her he was still gentle and observant. I have very high hopes for him in the next book. 
 So I was very happy with this book and am very excited to see what kind of madness will go down next. While I maybe did not love the first half of this book, just stick with it because it will get better. So I do recommend giving this book a try and the audiobook was very good.(You will love Stellans Russian accent)