Review: Gravity

Gravity (The Taking #1)
by Melissa West
Published December 18th 2012
by Entangled Teen

Summary from Goodreads:

In the future, only one rule will matter:

Don’t. Ever. Peek.

Seventeen-year-old Ari Alexander just broke that rule and saw the last person she expected hovering above her bed — arrogant Jackson Locke, the most popular boy in her school. She expects instant execution or some kind of freak alien punishment, but instead, Jackson issues a challenge: help him, or everyone on Earth will die.

Ari knows she should report him, but everything about Jackson makes her question what she’s been taught about his kind. And against her instincts, she’s falling for him. But Ari isn’t just any girl, and Jackson wants more than her attention. She’s a military legacy who’s been trained by her father and exposed to war strategies and societal information no one can know — especially an alien spy, like Jackson. Giving Jackson the information he needs will betray her father and her country, but keeping silent will start a war.

Thoughts:
Gravity has a unique and interesting plotline where aliens have made a treaty with humans to feed off nutrients from them in exchange for helping to rehabilitate the earth that has become desolate due to years of war. Even the pacing started off nicely with our main protagonist breaking the rule and instantly encountering the alien who was supposed to be taking antibiotics through her while she sleeps.

But once the story veered into the romance element, it completely fell apart. I just don't get the attraction between them. I found it a little disturbing that a guy can come into your home at night and starts latching himself like a parasite even if he is super hot. If Ari had enough sense as a daughter of a general she should have beat him up in the first place.

Only the whole conspiracy and mystery surrounding the Ancients keeps me reading the book till the end. And the fact that I'm probably as conflicted as Ari in trying to decide which is the proper course to choose makes it very interesting. I mean are you willing to sacrifice your loyalty to save your family and humanity or will you choose to remain loyal to humankind in letting them suffer? Gosh, that's a big decision to make. If only the romance are more believable then I would gladly give this 5 stars.

Verdict: 3 stars.
In my Debut Author Reading Challenge 
Available on: Amazon