Seen at Scott Reads It 
 For a while I wanted to read The Forsaken and I finally decided to pick it up when I received an ARC of the sequel. Despite all of the hype The Forsaken was just your average dystopian book. I had very mixed feelings regarding The Forsaken and I feel it had so much potential. 
 Almost ever very single darn thing in The Forsaken I have already seen way too many times. Of course kids are marooned on a deserted island and they split up into factions. Obviously there has to be a Big Brother-like figure and a crazy religious leader who has mindless followers. Add some generic romance, a mandatory government exam, and a disease, now you have all the ingredients used to make The Forsaken! 
 I'll be honest despite the fact that The Forsaken had all of the basic dystopian elements, it wasn't a terrible book. The action scenes are well-written and very engaging. My favorite part of The Forsaken is most certainly the action scenes because everything is so flat and undeveloped. For the most part The Forsaken is mostly fast paced and it did catch my attention for the most part. It just really bothered me how Stasse neglected to include anything original. 
 I really have no feelings regarding the characters or romance in this book. The characters are flat, undeveloped, and I really had no concern for any of the characters. I felt like I didn't really know any of the characters well enough to have any connection with them. Does every single female protagonist need to be insecure and complain how she's not beautiful enough and that guys never notice her? Alenna is one of those protagonists and of course the moment she steps on the Wheel, all the guys start to crush on her. As in bazillions of other YA novels, Alenna who is the insecure girl who is"invisible" to guys suddenly becomes the girl every guy wants to be with. I don't understand how a girl just magically transforms from being unnoticed to becoming the girls who's everyone's crushing on? It's an utterly ridiculous cliche factor that appears in most YA books and it bothered me tremendously while reading The Forsaken. 
 The romance between the characters isn't god-awful like in some books but it is a bit on the cheesy side. I felt like Alenna barely knew the guy she was supposedly in love with and that my friends is irritating insta-love. The romance slowed the pacing of the book and felt very inconsequential. I felt like the romance was just extremely pointless and it didn't anything at all to the plot. All the romance did was add a teenage angsty feel to the book where the girls are fighting over a guy. Seriously I didn't get the appeal of Liam at all and I was puzzled as to what they found so remarkable to him. 
 The Forsaken isn't a bad novel but it was all too generic for my tastes. If I hadn't read so many dystopian books, I think I would have liked this book a bit better. I really liked the premise of The Forsaken but it was executed poorly with too much of an emphasis on the romance. I hope that in the next Lisa M. Stasse develops her characters more and that there is more world building. I am going to read the sequel because I have an ARC and also because I believe that The Forsaken definitely had some potential. 
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