Book Review: Defiance

TITLE: Defiance
Book 1 in the Defiance series
AUTHOR: C. J. Redwine
PUBLISHED: August 2012
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Dystopian/fantasy? I'm not sure. Romance
PREMISE: Despite limitations placed on her by her society's brutal leader, Rachel does her best to find her father, lost out in the wastelands.
MY REVIEW: So...Defiance. Um...it's not the worst book I've ever read. But...it's not very great either. To me, this is one of those books that if you turn your brain off while reading it, you'll probably enjoy it a lot more because then you can ignore the plot holes. And believe me, there are plotholes.
Also if you turn your brain off you can ignore the sexism in it. I know, I know, the summary makes it sound totally feminist, right? Yeah, no. Rachel very rarely actually uses these awesome sword capabilities we're told frequently that she has and much of her use is mostly love interest. Logan pretty much does everything in the book after she whines and prods him to do it for her. Oh and Logan is sexist himself. I seriously lost count how many times he moaned about this silly little twat who doesn't know her place. Yet, she still falls for him and they still have epic true love. Fabulous. Then there's sloppy world building galore. I still don't know if this is fantasy, dystopian, what. I'm leaning towards fantasy because I'm sorry there's no way in hell this could ever be a possible future. Please tell me how women would totally be okay with being required to have male escorts to go everywhere in the future.
There was some nice writing, a bit of a plot, and I got the feeling the sexism wasn't intentional on the authors part but that's no excuse. Honestly this book just felt unimaginative and it was definitely sloppy and could have used tons of editing. Library read only if you're really interested.
WHO SHOULD READ: Um...not sure. Twilight fans maybe?
MY RATING: Two out of Five pretend badass girls