Warcross by Marie Lu

This semester hit me HARD. By the time I got home from work and school, I’m completely spent – what else is new? Sorry for being MIA for so long and being inconsistent with my reviews and posts, but at the end of the day, this is basically a reading journal for myself and any kind of readership is awesome, but I don’t do this for clicks or views, I don’t expect to ever make a living from this please pay me to read all day and therefore, my Master’s program comes first! 

This book has been on my list for pending reviews since January – I’ve since then reread Warcross and my opinion of it has only become more strong following my reread.

Warcross synopsis via goodreads:

When a game called Warcross takes the world by storm, one girl hacks her way into its dangerous depths. For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game – it’s a way of life. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down players who bet on the game illegally. When Emika hacks into the game illegally, she’s convinced she’ll be arrested, and is shocked when she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. In this sci-fi thriller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu conjures an immersive, exhilarating world where choosing who to trust may be the biggest gamble of all.I’d like to take this time to just do a little promotion… the sequel to Warcross, Wildcard is scheduled to come out in September 2018 and if anyone wants to just pre-order that for me and send it to my house, you just feel free to do that. While you’re at it, order Warcross and read it if you haven’t already and pre-order Wildcard, because Warcross is so good. SO. GOOD. like, why haven’t you read this?Let’s start with all the awesomeness and everything that I loved:

Marie Lu knows how to write descriptions. Warcross is beautiful and the way Marie Lu goes about sharing the world with her readers is flawless. She builds an incredible world in and out of gameplay full of layers, colors, and technology. I think this is the most colorful book I’ve ever read and I’m not even considering the rainbow cover.

I really enjoyed the way the city was built to be in used with the technology. The aspect of earning in-game perks for real-life activities and accomplishments, on the one hand, was really cool but personally the thought of my everyday life being influenced or hindered by my actions in a game kind of freaks me out. Thanks, Black Mirror for that one.

I loved the depiction of the main character, Emika’s dad. I live really far from my parents and don’t see them very often so I have a super soft spot for parents in books. Marie Lu describes Emika’s dad cooking pancakes in a kitchen and I was instantly transported to my parents’ kitchen putting butter on the pancakes as my dad pulls them off the hot griddle. I’m not crying. You’re crying.

Character building is HUGE. Each one has depth and a unique personality. Never in this book did I feel that a character was cookie-cutter nor did it leave me wanting more representation. ALL the representation. and Can I just throw out there that Marie Lu used the singular 3rd person personal pronoun to refer to all players?? That’s right, She wrote “she” when referring to rule applying to all the players in a match. I’ll just be in the corner fangirling.  We had disability representation in Asher, which was fantastic because he is in a position of authority and leadership. I loved that. Asher is a badass player in the game and equally as strong on the real-life side of the story.

The relationships are strong be it romantic or friendships. The romance is nice and really makes you root for the couple and feel with them, but to a point that it’s not overly done and doesn’t make you feel like you landed in an R-rated sex scene. Not that that’s always a bad thing.

Hideo Tanaka. Hideo Tanaka. Hideo. Tanaka. That’s all I have to say about that.

I also want to briefly mention that there’s a corgi!Ok so now it’s only fair to talk about what I didn’t like or what I found to be problematic:

…

Bueller? … Bueller? (or for those too young to remember Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) *enter cricket sounds here* 

Ok, fine. I can literally only manage one thing that I noticed the second time reading. I don’t even think I noticed it the first time. The line. The “I let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding” and its many variations. It showed up on three separate occasions, however, other than that I noticed it, it didn’t interrupt my reading or affect my experience at all.Go get this book. Pre-order Wildcard. Pre-order it for me. It’s one of my all-time favorite books and I’ve already read it twice this year! 

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Have you read this already? Is there a book you’ve already read twice in 2018? Do you have any book recommendations for me that are similar to Warcross? — Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading! – xo Amber

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