Rating: 3 stars
Synopsis: In Corin's world, your carpinomen - the name of your soul mate, marked indelibly on your wrist - is everything. It shapes your whole life, and sets out your future. People spend decades searching for the one they're supposed to be with.
But what if you never find your soul mate? What if you fall for someone else - someone other than the name on your wrist?
And what if - like Corin - you're desperate not to be found?
The premise of this book really intrigued me. I've found myself in a book rut at the minute and this book is short enough (my copy is only around 260 pages so it is a nice short book) to get me motivated to read once more.
I did enjoy this book but there is something missing and I can't quite put my finger on what. I thought Corin was a strong character (quite literally in some cases) but there were times when she annoyed me a little bit. Her mood towards soul mates jumped around quite a bit - one minute she was totally against the whole idea of soulmates the next, she was surprised that not everyone married their soulmate.
The world itself wasn't really explained. There were a couple of pages at the end which kind of explains why things changed but, unlike other dystopian fiction like Divergent or The Hunger Games, the world wasn't explained enough for me. It was just kind of there rather than a part of the story like I wanted it to be.
I did like the plot overall. I thought the plot was okay, with some unexpected twists and turns thrown in which surprised me. However, I do think some of these things need to be alluded to in more detail beforehand. For example (without giving too much away), we learn that Corin has 'contacts' that she uses to get things but we don't find out much more than that until the end and I would have liked to see more of how Corin uses the information she has to help the plot along.
Which brings us briefly to something that has been bugging me. Corin has all this information but she doesn't do anything with it. In this respect, Corin is drastically different from heroines like Tris and Katniss who use the information they have to defeat the government. Corin doesn't seem that interested in bringing down the government - she seems content to moan about it a lot which started to annoy me.
The ending. Oh.My.God. That ending. It confused me. A lot. It felt rushed and I didn't really understand the decision that Corin had made and why her sister was so mad about it. Helen Horins didn't really explain it very well and I finished the book feeling a little disappointed with the ending.
Overall, the plot was good, the romance was good BUT there are quite a few things that weren't explained well or at all and there was that...spark...missing. I'm not sure what it is but other dystopians like Divergent and The Hunger Games have it - it's a hard thing to describe when you don't know exactly what you're describing! You'll have to take my word for it ;)
Not bad for a debut novel (maybe I'm being a bit harsh - it is a debut) and I would like to see how Helen's writing develops from here, but her next book probably wouldn't be an automatic buy for me.
Image from http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18213013-the-name-on-your-wrist - no copyright intended
