Rush (The Game #1) by Eve Silver

Rush by Eve Silver

My Rating: ★★

Mika's barely holding on and trying her best to be normal when she almost dies and gets pulled into an alien fighting dimension known as The Game. Scared and confused, she's fighting aliens every so often before she's thrown back into her regular life like nothing happened. The Game quickly throws a wrench in the middle of her friendships and all she wants is answers from the frustratingly illusive Jackson, the leader of her squad who has his lips zipped.

This book irritated me until the very end. It's not that it's a bad book because it does have good things going for it. It has an interesting plot and the protagonist is a person of color, but the execution left me hanging. I was just as confused as Mika was for the first three chapters. I felt like I was Mika and I just got thrown into this random unknown world. If that's what Silver was going for, she hit the nail straight on the head. However, it took about half the book to get the story really going. Essential world building occurred in major information drops too late in the story. The illusive Jackson, who has a lot of the answers, would probably manage to screw up telling someone where the coffee was because he's that evasive when someone manages to pin him down. We also spend a lot of time dealing with teenage drama, which should've come after the essential world building and not before. I think this series has a lot of potential. It just needs a good polishing to get it to where it needs to be.

Now let's talk about the characters we spend the most time reading about. Mika is the most developed character in the book, and the poor girl is just as confused as I was for the first couple chapters. On top of dealing with her mother's death and her father's withdrawal and drinking habit, she's got a crappy best friend. Queue Carly, the alleged best friend. She's jealous, petty, and quick to find something to use as an excuse to turn on Mika. I hope Mika makes a run for it because we've all had a friend like Carly at one point in our lives. What made us stay friends with that person so long? Beats me, but Mika will be facing that same question soon enough. Mika and Carly's mutual friends are not seen enough to comment on, but it appears that they're closer friends with Carly because they leave Mika out in the cold. Poor Luka. I honestly thought he and Jackson were the same person for the first couple chapters. I had subconsciously decided that this single character's name was Luka Jackson.

All in all, like I said earlier in my review, it's not that it's a bad book. It's the execution that left me hanging. There's good elements that could've really shined and I think that it does have a good premise.