I really regret not reading this sooner. I think the writing style was a bit off and it might have been the author's debut novel. I feel like there were a lot of characters to keep up with, and for a while there they all came out at once so I had trouble keeping up until I made a list of who they were and their abilities.
Hollis was a little annoying but that is to be expected of a 16-year-old main character. I think she has some growth but I feel like she really needed to just stop and listen. Jonah Tiffany Keith most of the characters are cool I just really didn't like Ashton.
I think the story has a lot of potential and will definitely be getting the other two books.
This is a good book for people who like dystopian. It's giving x-men meets Darkest Minds.

I actually received this back in 2020 from the author via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I am so sorry I hadn't gotten to it.

The Diseased Ones was a bit mundane and boring at times. I never really got fully into the story or characters. Everyone seemed very superficial and fake. Great story idea thou.

DNF

It has been a while since I got this book and unfortunately I don’t really have any interest in reading the book anymore. I am also now a lot more picky with the books I request and choose to read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for providing this arc in an exchange for a review.

This book had such an interesting magic system and was set in a scifi dystopian backdrop. My kind of book! I loved following Hollis on her quest. The writing was easy to follow and the characters were well written. I would read the next book!

First, thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book. I really wasn't dissapointed to read this.

Its the year 2647, Hollis Timewire, on her 16th birthday like everyother kids of her aged must passed a test if she wanted to be a citizen of the world. But she failled. Meaning that she's a diseased one. She's born with a biomarker that gives stranges abilities. Being told all her life that emotion are evil and that the diseased ones are monsters that have cause a great massacre hundreds of years ago, she gonna be oblige to hide underground.

This group telling her that the governement is lying. They are the ones responsible for the massacre of people who have abilities. Hollis doesn't know who to belived and she doesn't trust the Diseased one at first. She's gonna train to learn to control her power, trying to figure out the truth and she's willing to risk everything to go back home. But who can she really trust...

I really have loved this dystopian novel and looking foward to read the sequel with the cliffhanger in the end.

This book had a "Hunger Games" feel to me. I did like the story over all and I liked the character of Hollis Timewire. The book kept me coming back for more and I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. *This book was given to me for free at my request from NetGalley and I provided this voluntary review.*

The Diseased Ones is a riveting dystopian world with a sci-fi setting. The struggle of believing in yourself and the conspiracies of two sides battling against each other makes for a great plot line.

The story revolves around Hollis, a sixteen year old girl who was raised to be an emotionless society member, but when she fails ‘The Test’, which determines if you have a biomarker that makes you ‘diseased’, she soon finds out that life isn’t so cut and dry. Life is about to get ten times harder than simply suppressing her emotions, try suppressing a power that brings everyone to their knees.

She’s thrust into a one hundred year old battle between the government and the diseased ones, who are really just individuals that have some sort of psychic ability. The plot was interesting and the world development was intriguing. A world that doesn’t show emotion, because emotions are messy and cause chaos. The drama of good guy vs.bad guy. The struggle that Hollis has of figuring out who is who and even the question of who she is, makes up most of the book.

For me it was a fairly quick read, but it seemed slow paced. There was lots of repetition, which consisted of Hollis’s internal battle of what she has been taught and coming to terms with a different potentially true reality that everything she knew is wrong.

Hollis herself at times wasn’t an easy character for me to get attached to. Especially at the end, she kinda of ruined it for me. For an emotionless society member that she thought of herself as she let her emotions and desperation get in the way.

Overall, it was an interesting read. If I’m correct, I believe there are more books to come, which hopefully clears up the cliffhanger of an ending in this book. A recommendation for true dystopian fans.

An interesting and well written/thought out storyline that is captivating for a reader. The plot was well developed and the writing style was great and easy to take in. An interesting take on magic and the magic systems were interesting to read about. A great starting place for a series!

This book has been done before with books such as Delirium, Matched, and The Program. I was excited to see how this one was different from the others that I have read and although this premise was well done. I failed to care for the characters. I just wasn't invested in the lives of the characters at all which failed to have me connect with the story.

Overall, I think this story is  written well. I found the entry into the story and the complex storyline very good. The writing style was very good and pleasant to read. All shown characters whether main or supporting are authentic and interesting. Especially because they are all different and have been presented in a pleasant way. I also like the character development. I think the cover really suits the book and genre nicely. The narrated story is  coherent in itself and the suspense is constantly present, thereby and through the great, detailed language, the book remains captivating until the end.

It’s 2647 and Hollis Timewire has been waiting her entire life to finally enter society. Living in a world where people with superpowers and human emotion have been eradicated, all she has to do is take one simple blood test on her sixteenth birthday to prove she’s just an average person. Once she passes, she can start her first work assignment and become an official citizen. Unfortunately for Hollis, there’s just one major problem: she just failed the test and it turns out she’s one of the so-called diseased ones.

I think that this book has an interesting premise. I’d love to find out more about how the society Hollis grew up in became so devoid of emotions. It seems like such a bleak world to live in, especially if you’re one of the people who are full of life, emotions, and superpowers that make one a moving target. I would imagine it was hard for Hollis to keep as emotionless as possible for her entire life when it’s not something that comes naturally to her.

While I loved the premise, I found that I didn’t care for Hollis. I understand why she doesn’t believe her newfound family and friends. It would be extremely difficult to find out that your entire upbringing and everything you’ve ever believed was a lie. However, I found it difficult to believe that she’d flip flop from one extreme to the next at the level she does at the end of the book. I feel bad for her, but I didn’t care for her as a character.

That said, I loved the characters at the superpower filled society she lives with for majority of the book. I found them far more interesting and multi-dimensional compared to Hollis, which made me wish that this book had at least two different narrators. I think that there is so much to this world but that it’s stifled by being viewed purely through a confused and close-minded point of view. Not that I blame Hollis. She’s trying to overcome a lifetime of brainwashing, which is difficult to do, especially when you don’t have any family or friends from your old life to support you along the way.

Ultimately, it’s not a bad book. There’s a great story in there and I do want to see where it goes from here. I just found myself wishing that we saw more after seeing how vibrant the other characters are in addition to the world that Hollis never knew existed. It was interesting to see glimpses of the cast of characters and their backstories. It’s something I hope to see more of in addition to the story unfolding on a larger scale as the series continues.

So at first glance, this book had so much potential. Sure, the title isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but I’m sure there are plenty of people like me that would go ‘ooh, I wonder what that’s about.’

Basically, Hollis is a normal 16 year old girl, living in a society where people don’t show their emotions. They are forbidden from touching other people. Children are also segregated by gender, with boys and girls educated separately. At age 16, everyone is tested to see if they have the genetic mutation that causes superpowers. Obviously, Hollis has that biomarker, and her powers manifest. The rest of the story follows Hollis as she tries to come to terms with her abilities, as well as learning to control them, after being taken in by ‘The Diseased Ones.’

I’ll say at the outset that the writing was pretty decent. I found Hollis’ first person, present tense, stream-of-consciousness narration kind of grating in the beginning, but you get used to it after a while.

The pacing was a bit off. There were long stretches where we just follow the minutiae of everyday life, and Hollis learning to control her powers. The action only starts to happen in the last 15- 20% of the book.

I also found a lot of the plot fairly predictable, and I felt like I was just waiting for something to happen. And when it did, I wasn’t surprised, or shocked, or… anything really.

Most of the characters were flat, but that tends to be what happens with this type of first person limited narration. Only Hollis gets any development, and I’m not really sure it was of the forward moving kind. She tended to be stubborn and naive, to the point where I wondered if she was being wilfully ignorant, despite all the information she received.

And I don’t even really want to talk about the romance. It’s not that it was bad per se, but she ‘falls in love’ with the first boy she ever touches. And she falls quickly. I’ll let you make your own conclusions about that.

Finally, I felt that the turning point – the event that actually starts the action – was very contrived. The series of random events that lead to the climax were inconsistent with the rest of the plot (and characterisation), and seemed conveniently slung in, in order to drive Hollis to action. And it seemed like a complete over-reaction.

The other little thing that bothered me was a question of logistics. Where on earth did they get all that food while living underground? It’s still bothering me.

Ultimately, I think this could have been a decent book. The ideas were interesting, but I think they weren’t executed as well as they could have been. Sadly, this book just wasn’t for me.

I really enjoyed this book. It was intriguing and the magic system was really interesting. I was interested in the world order and wished there was a lot more of the world building and power system and backstory on how the world got to this point. But all in all I really enjoyed reading The Diseased Ones and would definitely read the next one.

Thank you netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was a decent YA novel with sci fi elements. Reminded me of the Xmen series. I wasn't a big fan of Hollis since I expected a stronger character as a lead. Her fears and overemotional responses make her irrational not to mention the demon that appears to be controlling her from the inside. Hopefully the second part brings forth her courage .
This is a good start for a first part of a series and it had a promising ending.

Plot was well-developed, characters showed depth, and storyline contained action! Our main character thinks she has her life all planned out and she is ready to achieve her goals by acing the upcoming test. However, things do not go as planned and her life is upended——leaving her lost and confused. Is she now in a safe haven or has she been captured by the enemy? Will she ever see her parents again or are they part of her last now? Can she learn the truth and see past what she has been taught to believe all her life? Read to find out! Excellent book to become lost in!

Unfortunately this wasn’t for me, I am pretty sure lots of others will enjoy this, but to me it felt unoriginal and flat, it borrows from too many other YA dystopian books but not to any improvement, just not for me.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Almost gave up reading this one at the beginning but I pushed through and was glad I did. Very good book overall

The Diseased Ones follows Hollis from her unfeeling life aboveground to her intense world below ground. The story was captivating and held my attention the whole way through. The book starts off with us not knowing much about the world, but as Hollis gains knowledge so do we. I have no idea where the author is going to go with the second book as there is a lot of problems that now face the main character. I look forward to continuing this adventure.

***I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review***

Finally! A book I’ve read recently where I inhaled it over the weekend happily!

The main character, even though she is a teen, is written like a real person rather than a caricature of a teen who is only interested in ADVENTURE or ROMANCE. She has to deal with the struggles of what’s happening in her life as the worst happens, and continues to go downhill from there.

What I appreciated about this book is the fact that the main character THINKS. She contemplated, she feels happiness, confusion, and so many emotions. This is a fast paced read and I like it for being so. I absolutely hate lengthy, descriptive reads, especially when it’s supposed to be thrilling or action based. The author does well in this aspect.

This reminds me a bit of Uglies, but a bit more mature to read, which is a good thing. I eagerly await the next book.

Being born into a society where emotions are to be controlled, having a specific genetic marker responsible for developing superpowers is less than desireable. Being tested on her 16th birthday as everyone else, Holly is labeled "infected" and has to part with the system she knew. In this disturbia, Holly seeks the truth.