Unearthed (Unearthed #1) By Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner [ARC Review]

RELEASE DATE: January 09, 2018
AUTHORS: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner.
GENRE: Young-Adult, Sci-fi, Adventure.
PUBLISHER: Disney Hyperion
SUMMARY:

When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting for. The Undying’s advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.

For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study… as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don’t loot everything first. Mia and Jules’ different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.

In order to penetrate the Undying temple and reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient race’s secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand design that could spell the end of the human race.

Hi guys! Before getting into the review part, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas ! I’ve been on a mini hiatus because I’ve been busy with Christmas preparations and celebrations but now I’m back again.

*eARC Received from the publisher Via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

I don’t know how to describe my feelings about this book. It was one of my highly anticipated reads of 2018. I had super high expectations on it because it was Amie Kaufman’s book so writing this review was pretty hard for me cause it didn’t meet my expectations and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I’m not saying it was a terrible read because it really has a great concept that many readers would enjoy reading but sadly some of the aspects in the plot didn’t work out for me. Honestly, I tried really hard to love this book but In the end I just couldn’t because from the start I struggled with this book and the plot didn’t excite me much. The main characters Mia and Jules were okay-ish but they’re nothing incredible like Lilac and Tarver from the These Broken Stars.

The story takes place in the future where earth’s environment has become damaged and there is limited power supply. People struggle hard to live while adhering to the rules of the government. When earth receives a strange message from an extinct alien race who calls themselves The Undying race, all the people on earth has a new hope for their future.  With their advanced technology, they could re-build everything and undo the environmental damage they had caused with the wars. After the message from the undying race becomes public, researchers wants to study more about the planet Gaia and the mysterious ancient species, but scavengers just want to loot on Gaia for their advanced technology and they wouldn’t care about destroying temples or killing humans that comes in their way. Sixteen Year Old Mia is a scavenger who is desperately in need of money, Gaia is her last hope and she  needs to find something worthy enough that she could trade off. Jules is a scholar who comes to Gaia to study the undying race and also to find the answers that he was searching for a long time. After arriving at Gaia, he finds that his team has left without him and soon he gets into trouble with some dangerous scavengers but luckily he gets saved thanks to Mia’s help. Both Mia and Jules belongs to opposite worlds and they don’t trust each other but in planet Gaia they need each other to survive so they form an alliance. Together they hunt down alien temples, decode alien language, and survive the deadly traps but what they find in the end will shock them to the core.

Mia is a pretty likable character. She’s tough, stubborn, and smart. She’s not my favorite female protagonist but I did enjoyed her character in this book. She’s totally badass when it comes to surviving and I liked how she uses her multi tool. Her love for her sister is admirable and I hope we get to meet her in the second book. Jules is a super nerdy and very dork-ish character. At the beginning, I liked his naive and cute personality but as the story progressed, I found him very annoying. His insta – attraction to Mia has really annoyed me especially when he started to speak about hormones whenever she was near him. He was totally infatuated with her! He wanted to hate her but he couldn’t. The insta love between them is one of the aspects that hindered my enjoyment because they’re one of my major book turn-off’s. The secondary characters were nothing interesting and some of them weren’t fleshed out well enough. I wish the authors gave a bit more focus on the secondary characters too.

The plot was interesting but it didn’t thrill me as much as I thought it would. The info dumps and the long inner monologues made the story seem slow and less exciting for me. After halfway through the book, I find myself a little bored. The ending was intense and suspenseful though. It’s the only part that I enjoyed reading in the whole book. I already predicted the plot twist at the end and I can’t believe that our genius main characters has taken that long to figure it out. The writing style was good but It would’ve been great if they had written the plot with short inner dialogues and less detailed description. The story was told from Mia and Jules first person POV. The world building was great but to be honest, I was expecting more than a desert land and alien temples. I hope we get to explore more of this world in the next book.

Overall, it was an okay-ish read for me! Before getting into this book, I was actually expecting a five star read so It was a bit disappointing. Nonetheless, I still want to give this series another chance and I also want to know  what’s gonna happen next. I really hope the next book is much better than the first one. 

Recommend it?

Yes!

Despite my issues, I think it was a good YA sci-fi adventure and I want everyone to give this a shot because you might enjoy it more than I did. 

MY RATING:[3/5 Stars]

So, What do you think of this book? Have you read this yet? Do you want to read it?
Please Feel Free To Comment Below. ❤

See You In The Next Post and Have a Great Day! 🙂