A good YA novel, dystopian with an interesting premise that comes so close to fulfilling its initial promise.
I found the book initially hard to get into, and had to re-read areas to understand and pick up what I missed, so it was harder going for me than the average YA. A satisfying read, nevertheless.

4.5 stars!

This was honestly such a pleasant surprise! I loved the characters, the plot, the fact that there wasn't an unneeded romance to drive the plot further. All the actions of characters made complete sense, i never wanted to yell at them for making dumb decisions. Amazing, will for sure read more from the author, and will for sure reread and recommend the book!

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This is a classic dystopian novel with a few twists thrown in. I enjoyed it but it didn’t keep me super engaged all the time and it moved a little too fast in a few places. Overall I liked it though.

Set along the same "bones" as Hunger Games, The Circle Taken finds a group of young adults forced to fight each other to prove their worth. The ruling community has dictated that they fight for their space among the population. There is a underground rebellious group which threatens the community's absolute rule.
The story diverges from the Hunger Games with the characters. Our heroine has no memory of her childhood. She has been given no training to be able to protect herself during the fight episodes. She must count on herself and her few friendly adversaries to live through this chapter of what I hope will be a great series. So far, this book is a winner! Great story line, great characters and smooth, engaging writing from Sage Sask.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author of this book for the opportunity to read this book in advance, in exchange for an honest opinion.

I think The Circle is an interest read. It is a YA Dystopian. Some parts of the book reminded me a bit of The Hunger Games. The story is well-written and easy to understand, as well as the characters.

Alexia, the protagonist, has no memory of who she is or about her family for more than 5 years. When her secret is discovered, she is sent to a secret place. Here she has to fight to prove herself, while she has no memory of who she is. In the meantime, a group with very interesting ideas is introduced.

The book is very fast paced, so the reader needs to pay attention, otherwise you will miss certain aspects. I recommend this book to other readers who love a YA dystopian read.

Loved this! It is not an original concept when it comes to YA books but that is quite okay in my book as long as it's executed in a good manner. I could connect to the main character, understand her dilemma when it comes to choosing between a mother who abandoned Alexia for her own, still a bit unsure, goal and her new friends who gave her a home and sense of belonging missing until then. The action and adventures were exciting like you would hope and the plot slowly unravels. Personally I cannot wait until the sequel and will want to dead that asap!

The Circle is an interesting YA Dystopian read. A major part of the plot reminded me of The Hunger Games, but the story here is well-written and the characters were easy to understand. The story is quite fast paced and if the reader does not pay attention, it is easy to miss something important. 

Alexia, the protagonist, has no memory of who she is or about her family for more than 5 years. She lives at an orphanage and learns to just keep her head down and move forward. When her secret is discovered, she is sent to a secret place. Here she has to fight to prove herself, to train, all the while trying to figure out who she really is. As she navigates this world and discovers it's secrets, we are introduced to a group of people with a very specific way of thinking. 

The characters are well crafted and interesting, most in their teenage years. All of them seek to befriend Alexia for different reasons, but in the end they stand together as one group. This journey is wonderful to read about. As fast-paced as the story is, a lot happens in this book and it ends at a twist leaving the reader yearning for more. I enjoyed reading this book and am looking forward to the next book, mainly to discover what happens to Alexia. The questions of how she deals with the truth behind her identity and the consequences of her decisions will hopefully be answered in the next book! This book is worth a read for fans of dystopian YA fiction.

This dystopian novel is a must read!

I found the characters to be very engaging, especially Alexia, the main character. I enjoyed the other characters throughout the book as well. Some were not quite as dynamic as Alexia's growth through the novel, but they still made the story very interesting and hard to put down.

The pacing of the story felt cohesive and very easy to follow. The material is also clean and very young adult appropriate. I loved how there were great moral lessons throughout and how fiercely loyal most of the kids in the Circle are of each other.

Overall, I enjoyed this book immensely and can't wait until the sequel comes out!!!

I found The Circle to be an enjoyable young adult, dystopian fantasy. The concept of the story reminded me a lot of the Hunger Games which is very difficult, if not impossible to measure up to for me.

The world war resulted in the destruction of the world as we know it. In the aftermath the government divided civilians into zones and now govern with strict enforcement of the law (curfews, job allocation etc). The female protagonist Alexia was found washed up on a beach a few years ago without any recollection of her past. She is placed in an orphanage where she learns to survive in a world she does not know.

At the age of 16 all citizens must take a test to ascertain if they have the qualities suitable to remain as a member of society. No one knows what happens to those who fail. Alexia has a secret gift she fails to keep from the government during her test. Upon discovery of her secret Alexia is sent to The Circle, a secret government operation for the strong and gifted. Every year The Circle conduct an evaluation, a final test for recruits before becoming a fully fledged member. Alexia, who has not grown up training with the other recruits must also participate in the evaluation. The evaluation consists of two teams competing against each other in three stages. A test designed to eliminate the weak and showcase strength and leadership. Past evaluations have resulted in permanent injury and death of participants.

Not everyone agrees with the governments policy and laws. A group who call themselves 'The Resistance' are causing further destruction and fear in their attempts to overthrow the government.
Without any memories Alexia questions who she is and where she belongs. Alexia's character is flawed in a way that made her more relatable and enjoyable to read about. I really enjoyed following Alexia on her journey. Yet, I did not feel the other characters were fleshed out enough. When Alexia first joins The Circle a lot of characters were introduced within short succession. Other than her love interest Ryan, I found Alexia's relationships and interactions with others to be mostly stunted, superficial and insignificant.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story and I look forward to reading the sequel.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Very interesting it was slow at times but really picked up can't wait for the next one to see what happens with alexia. Will she be killed? If not Will her and Ryan ever get together? Will seraphine ever find her son and what will happen once Harrison tells what seraphine did? Can't wait for the next one.

Intriguing. It's a dystopian novel, which quickly drew me in and left me scrambling to place it, compare it or make it fit.. against flashes of Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, The Culling Trials, or any number of other books. I wanted more depth, but I enjoyed the book. I wanted to read more not because it's a perfect book but because this author wove a tale with enough gut-wrenching humanity--foibles, frailty, and all--to make me care about this not-so-little girl, lost. Struggling with right-and-wrong, belonging, and a hunger for freedom, she is a rebel without a cause, devoid of all but a few bare flashes of memory as she desperately tries to make her way in a confusing and enigmatic secret world.

I was really a good book !

The story was interesting and well excecuted

At first it was hard to get into it because it was written from a first POV but I kept reading it and I was hooked !
The writting style was great.

I loved the characters especially Alexia.

I can't wait to read the sequel !

Not really a new concept but it was executed very well because the writing style was great that I really enjoyed it a lot! I haven't read a first POV in a long time so this was a treat.

The story is about Alexia who doesn't remember anything when she woke up on the shore of the beach. She is taken to an orphanage and stays there until she has to pass a test run by the government. In this world, people live in Zones because the war destroyed almost everything and so the government decides everything from what to work and how to live your life. There is a group called The Resistance which makes things worse since they're like a terrorist group.

During the test, Alexia fails because of her secret and is sent to the Circle where the story really starts and gets more interesting as it goes.

What I enjoyed the most is the suspense whenever Alexia has to keep her secrets and the angst between her and Ryan. The story also focuses a lot on their interaction which I loved the most and because of that, they're the most fleshed out. The other characters were fine but not as fleshed out as Alexia and Ryan.

What I didn't like much was some scenes during the Evaluation since I felt like it was rushed. I didn't like Shane's comic relief either, it felt too superficial for my liking. The reasoning for the Evaluation wasn't good enough for me either but everything else was great.

Overall, the ending felt a bit rushed but I'm invested so much that I really want to know what happens next! The way it ended and how things will be different in the next book really excites me so I'm really looking forward to reading the next book!

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with the digital copy for an honest review.

The Circle: Taken by Sage SASK, 484 pages.
SBSK Corporation, 2019. $13.
Language: PG (7 swears, 0 “f”); Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG13
BUYING ADVISORY: MS, HS - OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
With physical contact, Alexia can see the past and future of those she touches, but the one life she wants to know about alludes her -- her own. Alexia is captured by a group who know her secret and also have questions about her past. Depending on the answers they find, Alexia could be among enemies who want to kill her as easily as among friends who want to help.
The story was difficult to get into and follow because of the disjointed feel and an inadequate description of the powers Alexia has. After the first few chapters, the disjointed feeling faded as the story flowed through the main points. I found the story interesting, but I didn’t enjoy it -- I didn’t like the constant wavering between learning the “truth” just to find out that it wasn’t really the truth and something else is the real “truth,” which made being kept in the dark from the facts annoying instead of intriguing. However, after struggling to enjoy the book, I found that I loved the last several chapters -- if the first 400 pages hadn’t been so hard for me to get through, I would be looking forward to the sequel.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

**E-book ARC provided by Netgalley**

I almost didn't make it past the prologue because it sounded so mechanical. After some thought I think it was the third person present tense. It took me three days to get through those few short pages. After that it improved immensely. Never been a big fan of first person present but I was able to ignore it after awhile.

The writing itself is really good. Very descriptive and flows nicely. There's plenty of characters and they were all fleshed out which was nice. Too often you end up with only the one or two main characters really having any detail to them. This had the best large cast of well-rounded characters that I've seen in awhile.

I liked that Alexia's training when she was a kid gave her an edge but yet she was still the underdog because heck, 5-6 years of no training and memory loss would put her behind everyone else.

The shades of good and bad were nice. No one is perfect. Everyone had flaws, but yet most everyone also had good traits. It was extremely hard to guess people's motives and where this would go which kept the suspense nice.

I had two things that kept me from enjoying this 100%. The first was Alexia's waffling on who she was going to help. Now I LIKED that she saw that these people she was working with weren't pure evil and thought about how her actions would affect them. But I thought she tended to be too generous in her thoughts. These are kids who have never second guessed what they've been told. They are part of an organization that is run by a government who tests kids to see if they have any potential for causing harm and then kills them.

The organization poisoned its own members to increase their powers. I felt like the Circle leader got off easily on that. Ryan didn't seem at all bothered by it when he told Alexia and Alexia was unfazed as well. So this medicine that both Alexia's people and the Circle people need is only necessary because the Circle kept dosing their people.

I had way more sympathy for the people who broke from the scary government and the corrupt Circle than I did for the Circle. Alexia leans pretty heavily towards being on the Circle's side though and I wish she'd had more balance.

Second thing was the training. They're major pushing these teens to have some super fighting skills. . . why? For the test. A test that's deadly and it's supposed to prepare them for the "real world" but Alexia lived in that world for 5 years. And there was no indicator that you needed some crazy martial arts to survive. The lack of seeing anything about this world outside of Circle island and the test--besides what we see from Alexia early on--made me feel like all the combat training was unrealistic? It didn't make sense. The test didn't make sense. The lack of classes dedicated(or at least shown) to learning how to be a Reader was surprising.

It's like they were taking all these mind readers and putting them in military bootcamp instead of training them on how to use their skills. And then you can't figure out why they need all these fighting skills and they go through a test that really didn't require them to use their fighting skills OR their mind reading skills.

I felt like that was a really large plot hole.

I'd be interested in reading something else by this author/group as the writing and characters were really good.

The Circle Taken is written with intense creativity. Sage Sask has created a fantasy world many of my middle school students would have been glad to visit. Recommended reading for school and home.

I found this book hooking. At 16, to have no recollection of your past, trying to survive must be hard. However, Alexia does this and you can feel the struggle. You can feel her knowing there is something off and that she cant quite put her finger on it, but its there at the back of her mind. To be different and try to not touch anyone. Alexia, already alone, must have felt so much more of that because she was constantly trying to limit all contact with other people to stop the visions.

This book is an amazing adventure. Not only does Alexia show us love, friendships and difficult choices but she also shows us that really she is us - only in another world. Everyone has their own battles, their own struggles, their own secrets.
I like that she has a destiny, but shes trying to change it.


I really recommend this book!!

Happy Reading!

This was a really interesting read. I liked it more than I initially thought I would. There's still a lot that's confusing as well, though. I want to know more about the Resistance's motivation. And I don't think the Circle is as good as they make themselves out to be. I hope there's a second book soon.

I was really excited to read this book. The plot was right up my alley and it was honestly everything I would want in a book. While I know this was an advanced copy I felt like there were parts of the storytelling itself that took me out of the story, One of the things I noticed was that there were parts where the sentence length was all about the same so it felt sort of choppy. I also wish that some parts went into more detail because I found myself getting confused about why some things were happening.

I honestly hope that these things were fixed in the final copy because I would've loved this book if it weren't for the things I mentioned before. The storyline was super interesting and an idea I would've really loved. Ultimately, that's why I chose not to review this one on my blog because it's a lot of things that bothered me and may not have bothered anyone else. So, I decided to leave my review open only to NetGalley as to not cloud anyone's judgment of this book one way or another.

If you are a fan of dystopian worlds, this book should be next of your TBR!

We fall into a world where on your 16th birthday, you are tested whether you may become a criminal or not, and if you are found to be the later, today becomes your death day.

So when the main character is about to be tested, her whole world comes into focus. But when a random woman saves her from a rebellion attack, maybe all she’s ever known isn’t as what it appears?

The book is filled with survival, friends, family, and a mission. The characters vibe well with the plot leaving you twisting and turning through special abilities, training, and tons of questions about her world and where she came from.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. The writing style was catchy and drew me in rather quickly leading me to finish it within a few sittings. There are some elements to the story that I found to be a little clique in YA, but it still presented with a unique twist that was fun to read.