This book was so scarily wonderful. I will be asking every teen and fan of YA to read this book when it comes out. While not intended as a cautionary tale, its premise is so plausible in today’s world that the dystopian setting does not seem that far in the future. The premise is engaging, the characters are wonderful and well developed and the writing flows. As soon as I finished reading it, I wanted to start it again, I cannot wait until others can read and start talking about this book! It has an ending that leaves the reader satisfied. I sure do hope that the author writes a sequel soon, though, because I want more more more!

I really enjoyed this book - it brought together a number of different styles and stories for instance 1984 and ManHunter (both favourite books of mine).

It is an easy read with a flowing story and freat to have a female lead in a book of this type.

It kept me coming back for more - the reason I gave it 4 stars is that I would like to have read a ‘longer’ finish - perhaps an epilogie would have been useful

"The Seclusion" had a very interesting premise, but in the end it just reminded me of too many other books which were much better. It would be unfair to compare it to dystopian classics such as "The Handmaid's Tale" but ultimately it shares the same kind of world where information is limited, controlled or forgotten and the discovery of books from earlier really is nothing new, and in fact is a pretty tired and well used formula, as is an all controlling government. We really have been here before, many times.

I've seen a few YA tags on this book, but I thought it was too slow paced for most teenagers, but stronger readers may well enjoy it. Although it starts slow, it picks up when the main characters hit the road and the author's vision of this very different America which has isolated itself from the rest of the world was strong and well developed. But on the downside there were too many descriptions, which really lessened the pace and I found myself losing the thread.

In parts it was tough to get through and this area of fiction is a crowded market and I do not think this novel had enough going for it to separate itself from the pack.

DNF.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I'd been hearing about it on Twitter, so I snapped it up when my NetGalley request was approved. I will give the author all due credit when it comes to world-building. The couple of chapters I read reminded me a bit of 1984, a bit of The Handmaid's Tale, and even a dash of Fahrenheit 451, with her very well rendered depictions of an all-controlling government.

But-

The chapters I read were a slog to get through. The author did not know when to pull back, when to not write so darn much about everything, and when to let the reader pick up nuances about this world and not explain each and every thing. It just went on and on, nothing happening for paragraphs, and finally I'd had enough. There might be a good story here, but it's buried under too much exposition.

I thought this was kinda be a bad or shittier Matched. Like, the love aspect is there in the book and I didn't really believe it but it was nothing like Matched at all. When I first read Matched, it was a favorite. I devoured the books but it hasn't really stood the test of time. I'm sure a lot of us can relate to that. I don't know why I did think it was gonna be like Matched by Ally Condie, but I'm glad it wasn't. While it has some similar aspects such as "The Board" in the book can be related to "the officials" in Matched, and there are similarities, in this book it feels more developed. It feels a bit more organic, and some of the things honestly reminded me about The Handmaid's Tale (obs! not the book but the series). There are some problematic things in the book I really didn't get such as the love aspect which just left me ???? okay ??? but I'm not gonna go into spoilers.

One thing that also slightly bothered me was information dumps. There was a lot of them, and they didn't really seem to be in the right place most of the time even though I get WHY they were there.

I think I'd read this book again or definitely check out the author with more books.