A lot of more recent books from the Young Adult/Dystopian genre seemingly tend to imitate the sweeping successes trilogies like The Hunger Games or Divergent were, featuring a likeable heroine, usually an attractive male protagonist, certain dystopian elements, some villains and an exciting plot. Don't be mistaken, a lot of those aspects you will discover in Patrick Ness' trilogy as well, but that's by far not everything this book has to present to its readers. Let me attempt to convince you of why you have to read this book. 
 a) The characters are well-developed and qualified to root for, and let's not forget, we won't find a second pair like Peeta and Katniss or Tris and Four in this book. Instead, the protagonists are twelve-year-old Todd Hewitt (when do modern YA Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Dystopian novels ever feature a male point of view character?) and the bizarre Viola, a lost girl he discovers in the swamps surrounding the town he grew up in. During the course of the novel, Todd and Viola have to learn to rely on each other in order to survive, and it's their relationship which marks central parts of this novel. What's the best part of it? Patrick Ness doesn't include useless romantic aspects in the storyline, partly thanks to the characters' ages. I'm not against romance in novels, but I'm against using the same romantic devices in YA novels over and over again. Instead of love, Patrick Ness explored the motif of friendship, and he absolutely succeeded in doing so. 
 b) The premise is original and interesting alike, establishing a world in which your thoughts are not exactly your own thoughts, because everyone else is able to hear your thoughts which surround your body in an everlasting presence following a virus which was released on human beings by an alien race. Imagine what that means: It is very hard to lie or conceal secrets, because in a lot of cases, the more you try not to think of certain things, the more you can't help but think about them, and if you think about them, others will know your thoughts. This can definitely be a good thing, but in a world such as this, where Todd and Viola have to escape their enemies and survive against creatures who want to harm them ... in such a world it isn't always that good. 
 c) The adventure in this novel is so intriguing that, especially in the second part of the novel, it will rob you of the capability to put the book down again. I had a rather hard time getting into the story, but once it started to become more fluent and reminiscent of Ness' writing in the acclaimed A Monster Calls, I was hooked and couldn't take my eyes off the page anymore. Sometimes it is annoying to find out that each and every single chapter ends on a major cliffhanger, but the author managed to insert them into the story in such a believable way that I ended up not minding this at all. In addition, Todd's dog Manchee has to be the best dog ever. (Did I mention that animals are able to speak in this world? And they will bluntly say, independent from which situation they are in, when they have to poo.) 
 And if you now forget about the least-developed villain of all time this novel unfortunately features with the more than crazy Aaron, then it could have been a 5-star-read. But that shall not discourage anyone from reading the book, because if you are interested in a crossover between the genres YA and Science Fiction with some surprising depth, then reading this book can be totally recommended. 
 Buddy Read with Adita. Read her review here.