Ticker by Lisa Mantchev is a steampunk adventure with high stakes and lots of heart. When Penny’s mechanical heart is stolen, she teams up with her daring friends to recover it, navigating thrilling dangers and conspiracies along the way. Filled with action, wit, and vibrant characters, it’s perfect for steampunk fans!

Penny Farthing was nearly dead when surgeon Calvin Warwick replaced her heart with a mechanical 'Ticker'. With the brass heart, Penny became the first of the Augmented.

But Calvin is arrested and put on trial for mass murder when it is learned that many people died as he's worked on them, trying to build an improved Ticker for Penny.

On the last day of the trial, the Farthing factory is bombed, Penny's parents are missing and she and her brother (Nic) receive a ransom note ... they must turn over all the Augmentation notes if they ever want to see their parents again. On e problem ... they don't know where that research is! Penny and Nic know they are in over their heads and recruit three family friends to help them find and deliver the Augmentation research and get their parents safely home. And they have to do it before Penny's Ticker runs down.

I am personally not a fan of steampunk - mostly because it often feels as though the 'punk' takes precedent in a story at the expense of character and plot. That would be one of my biggest issues with this particular book.

The first chapter was rather exciting and I enjoyed the descriptions and the set-up. Penny Farthing was a fun, energetic character and I immediately thought that this was the kind of character that teen girls would identify with and enjoy reading about.

But the rest of the book didn't improve on that opening. Rather than developing the characters, which were off to a great start, they stay pretty much the same as when we first met them, all the way through the book. There is also a lot of emphasis on the gadgets. This is always a tough balance ... you want to create a fun, unique world and YA and Middle Grade books want a high CTPP (Cool Things Per Page) quotient, but not at the expense of a story.

Looking for a good book? Ticker, by Lisa Mantchen, starts off well but never picks up speed. Young readers being introduced to steampunk with this book may find it exciting.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I love a good Steampunk story, and Ticker did not disappoint. The premise of the story was interesting…A girl with a mechanical heart, and the mad doctor who went to great lengths to keep that heart ticking. Penny is a great lead character, and her group of friends all add to the eccentricity of the story.

Though we did learn backstory throughout the book, I would have loved to have the book start with some of that. It would have been quite an interesting story.

Can you believe I've never read a steampunk book before? I can't. Especially with how amazing this book was. Non stop action, amazing clockwork animals and especially bugs, and just the imagination and the imagery in this book made it completely unlike anything else I've read lately. I also loved all the characters, even the bad ones. They were so well rounded and put together. I just couldn't get enough. And that's why it's one of my new favourites.

The story follows a set of twins, Penelope (Penny) and Copernicus (Nic), and their friends, Sebastian and Violet, as well as their parents, and a few other important people, told through Penny's point of view. But she's a lot different than anyone else around her, because she has a clockwork mechanical heart. There's this problem with the girls in her family, not her mother but her two deceased sisters and her, where their hearts just give out one day without warning. And their family friend is willing to do anything, and I mean anything, to keep her ticker ticking. But that's where things get kind of nasty.

After being put on trial for murder, they find out that Warwick, the man who created her ticker, has been testing his inventions and augmentations on innocent people, and even children. And Penny's the first survivor. She doesn't agree with his methods at all, but she needs him to stay alive. And when a set of very specific events result in her parents being kidnapped, the crew is sent off in search of the man who created her heart, and has escaped from prison and is holding her parents hostage. That's when things really get exciting.

Something I really appreciated about this book, was how easy it was to imagine it. I sometimes have problems with imagining the characters as they're supposed to be seen, how the author wants them to be seen, and that wasn't a problem with this. From hair colour to tattoos to what dress they're wearing that day, I loved every bit of them, even when things went sour. I loved their quirks and their mannerisms, and everything about the world that they're in. It just seemed so exciting, being able to dress up so fancy, watch mechanical bugs, and maybe see someone with an interesting copper augmentation. I kind of wish that this was a series so that I didn't have to say goodbye to the characters so soon, but not everything can be, and I can appreciate that. I'd love to get a paper copy so that I can jump back into this world whenever I want.

So if you're into bad ass characters and a world full of cakes, dresses, and machinery that is very much alive in the sense of animals and bugs, mixed into an amazing story of coming together with your friends, fighting for what's right and battling a very hard illness at the same time, I highly recommend checking it out!

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I was unable to read this. due to it being archived before I got around to it. I will be looking into reading it at a later date. It has such an interesting premise. I'm disappointed i didn't get to it sooner, but a 2013 release oops '
I can't believe I am that behind on these. It sound super fun.

The plot sounded promising; with the main character in an interesting moral dilemma however the actual story was not interesting. It was hard to follow with its chaotic events and annoying characters. There was more time put into all the gadgets and gizmos to classify this as steampunk then there was of any other forethought. Annoying characters who do dumb things for the sake of being dumb to give a half hearted attempt at conflict is the worse to read. We were thrown in to this world with the expectation that we would already have a basic understanding of how the world was set up, when we did not have the slightest inkling.

I admit it was quite of a slow start reading Ticker, but I tend never to give up on books and I felt like it became better. You're just completely thrown into the story at the start that I didn't have a clue as what was going on and why, and who are all these characters anyway?.

It's really weird, but all the while it felt as if I was reading the second or third instalment in a series rather than a standalone. But according to my best knowledge it truly is a standalone novel. (I normally really appreciate if not everything is spit out literally in a story, but this just made me feel lost and was confusing).

I'd liked to get to know more about the back story, since that seemed really interesting. The story in Ticker was okay but not as special or original as I had hoped.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!