Book Review: Hover by Melissa West

On Earth, seventeen-year-old Ari Alexander was taught to never peek, but if she hopes to survive life on her new planet, Loge, her eyes must never shut. Because Zeus will do anything to save the Ancients from their dying planet, and he has a plan.

Thousands of humans crossed over to Loge after a poisonous neurotoxin released into Earth's atmosphere, nearly killing them. They sought refuge in hopes of finding a new life, but what they became were slaves, built to wage war against their home planet. That is, unless Ari and Jackson can stop them. But on Loge, nothing is as it seems...and no one can be trusted.

Best Bits: I liked the forward movement of the plot for Ari. She's now on Loge, and there is a lot that comes with that. She has to adjust to a new place, and come to terms with the choices that her family and friends are making on Earth. She's now accepting why people see her as a leader. She's basically been trained for it by her father. She also doesn't shy away from her responsibilities. That doesn't mean she has no "OMG why me?!" moments, but she handles them well. Plus, she also has to deal with the constant physical and emotional threat of Zeus. I appreciated getting to see more of how Zeus became a ruthless leader. Perhaps that's George R.R. Martin's influence on me, or my age, but lately I've really enjoyed feeling some empathy for the baddies.

Nit Picks: Okay, I can't fault the actual book for this, but my review copy had places where almost entire paragraphs were glitched and I couldn't read them. It was particularly frustrating because it felt like I was missing extremely crucial information. I'm not sure if this was a wide-spread problem, but I had to make guesses about the content of sentences that looked like this "XSOSIGH OSIRH SOSI." It made the reading process kind of a bummer. I do think that Hover was a bit of a victim to the middle book phenomenon. Yes, the characters were expanded upon, but I felt like I was waiting for more to happen.

Hover
By Melisa West
Published by Entangled Teen
352 pages
Received for Review