Review: Dangerous

Dangerous
by Shannon Hale
Published March 4th 2014

by Bloomsbury

ARC from Netgalley

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Maisie Danger Brown just wanted to get away from home for a bit, see something new. She never intended to fall in love. And she never imagined stumbling into a frightening plot that kills her friends and just might kill her, too. A plot that is already changing life on Earth as we know it. There's no going back. She is the only thing standing between danger and annihilation.

I have three words for you. Maisie. Danger. Brown. How can anyone not fall in love with a one-armed, half Latina, genius with a cheesy name like that? And she's funny and kind too.

I'm pretty overwhelmed after reading Dangerous. Since I'm a big fan of Shannon Hale previous The Books of Bayern series with its fairy tale inspired setting so it is with much excitement that I started this book. It is refreshing to see Shannon's brand of strong female characters and witty dialogues can be found in Dangerous and while some readers did not enjoyed Shannon switching to another genre (sci-fi), I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome.

Unlike Shannon's earlier books, Dangerous has quite a frenetic pace. The action filled plot keeps me flipping the pages and there's so much twists and turns it made my head hurts. The book was described as Space Camp meets The Avengers but for me it's more like Space Camp, The Avengers, Hunger Games and Body Snatchers all combined.

You have the lovable deformed main character with her zany scientist parents going to a space camp after winning a sweepstake from a cereal box and from then on things get pretty crazy. We have kids suddenly turning into superhumans, people getting possessed by aliens, kids killing each other, crazy billionaire who is also the father of one of the superpower kids hunting them down and a mad plot nick named the Purpose to defeat the aliens who intends to take over Earth. Phew! And yeah the book also has useless love triangle involving the girl, her best friend and the delinquent rich boy which left me literally pulling my hair because it's so YA.

In the end, after the insane epic battle and roller coaster ride of a book, what makes me love this story so much is Maisie herself. She will definitely be one of the most memorable YA character I've encountered this year.