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Book Review: The Thousandth Floor

THE THOUSANDTH FLOOR by Katharine McGee
5 Stars
Verdict: A futuristic teen drama beginning and ending in murder



It’s a high school drama set in a futuristic tower that’s more like a world inside itself. Think of Pretty Little Liars or Gossip Girl, except 100 years into the future. Same problems - boyfriends, cheating, drugs, illegitimate children - with a different flavour.

Avery lives at the top of the tower, beauty and wealth gifted to her from birth. The one thing she can't have is the only thing she wants - her adopted brother, Atlas. Leda is Avery’s best friend, but things have been weird between them since she started dating Atlas - she hires Watt, a hacker who seems too good at his job, to find out more about him. A family secret sends Eris's social status down the tower, while Rylan ends up higher than expected.

Their lives become tangled, tripping over each other until one of them falls from the thousandth floor.

There five point of views: Avery, Leda, Rylan, Eris and Watt. It’s a lot, especially with the majority being girls, but it just about worked for me. I had to pause a few times to reassure myself of the narrator, but each character is crafted meticulously, and by the end of the book, I felt like I knew them all really well.

I know some readers are weirded out by the brother thing. They're not related by blood if that helps. If it doesn't, then it's probably best to avoid this book.

Most of the details are left to the reader’s imagination. This is something I usually don’t like – I want to know how the world ticks down to the smallest cog – but for this story, it worked. The setting played on my imagination, and the logistics of the story weren’t overly dependent on the world so it wouldn’t matter if I was picturing it all wrong.

The world building is what makes this book more than just another teen drama. It adds a fun, imaginative twist to every single scene, and that made it an easy book to whip through.

Source: Bought it.

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