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Feb 14, 2012

Reynje rated it:

2.5 stars

The description of Starters immediately snagged my attention: teenage donor bodies, elderly renters, a vaguely sinister business commercialising on desperation, poverty and the allure of eternal youth for hire.

I think it’s a strong idea and ripe for ethical discussion, in this case examined through the lens of a post-apocalyptic/dystopian world where the fallout from biological (I assume) warfare has rendered life precious, and youth a commodity. The balance of More...

2 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2012

Amy or "Ames" added it

Rating and review to come.

The tagline: "Your body. Rented out. Used to murder." sold it to me.

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 20, 2012

Jop rated it:

Really looking forward to this book. Think it will be a real page turner!!
A Very Striking Book Cover!!

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 28, 2011

Suzanne rated it:

I just read the chapter sampler and am completely engaged in the story. Actually, the first two or three lines in chapter 1 and I was hooked. The protagonist is a girl caught in a difficult situation and scrambling to save what family she has. She's doing it in a completely hostile world, with a few spectacular twists. What elevates this story is its take on the generation gap (and what a gap it is) and on the importance of staying compassionate in a world that has forgotten that children are ou More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jan 23, 2012

Isamlq rated it:

I’ll be frank. STARTERS came short of something I’d have probably enjoyed. It’s just that I had a so many issues with it. I’ve read so many books of world order altering diseases and the outcome that Callie’s world read similar to the lot of those. Add the fact that the characters could have been so much more; they had potential, but there’s potential unmet here because Callie and Michael and Blake and even Old Man never reached theirs.

Her potential lay in being strong and doing what More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2011

Derek rated it:

When I read the chapter sampler of Starters, I was blown away. Starters is high concept, high octane. The voice of the main character (Callie) grabs you from the first sentence. Reading it reminded me of how I felt when I read Hunger Games: totally entranced and anxious for the next page and the next and the next. I know what all my reader friends are going to get for their birthdays next year. A copy of Starters.

Starters begins with a brilliant premise, which is that there are More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Kimberly rated it:

I was given the ARC of STARTERS at the New York SCBWI Conference and I can't tell you what a lucky break that was for me. I am so excited to have gotten an early peek at this debut novel. My only complaint? Now I have to wait, for what is going to seem like forever, until I can read ENDERS and find out what happens after all those cliff hangers? *growls at Lissa Price*

Why do I love this book? Starters has amazing characters, a very unique setting and a super exciting plot. But the be More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Karla added it

read complete review here: http://notjustnonsense.blogspot.com/2012...

Sixteen year-old Callie Woodland is an orphan and a Starter. After the Spore Wars all the people from the ages 20-60 were killed by the disease, which spread faster than the vaccines. The children and elders were immunized first, due to their 'vulnerability', and so were the only survivors post-war. The youngsters are called Starters and the elders, Enders. Due to the greater numbers of senior citizens, that started More...

0 comments like

Jan 28, 2012

Emily rated it:

Starters is another book in the YA Dystopian genre. I thought Starters started out well, but then the story line just had me asking too many questions. There were too many things that I just didn't get. With a lot of the dystopian novels there are certain world-building aspects that may be a little odd or unrealistic that you just have to accept before you can enjoy the novel. The key is whether you can move past it or not. For example, with Matched or Delirium, I find it unlikely that Society w More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2012

Book Whales rated it:

Originally posted @ Book Whales

HER WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER

This book is incredible! The author is so creative and the story is unique. There is nothing like it.

The story starts after the Apocalypse, killing people who weren’t vaccinated. Before the genocide spore, a vaccine was given to people below 20 and above 60 years old (Children and Elders) making them immune to the disease. So people between the ages of 20-60 were killed. It’s surreal right? More...

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Jan 26, 2012

Melissa rated it:

I absolutely loved this book. While there is a second book coming, it's a satisfying read on its own. There was a lot of buzz about the manuscript so I had high expectations when I read this. This can lead to disappointment sometimes but I was even more excited when I finished. I'm always a fan of a strong female character and STARTERS delivers. Set in a future where a virus has wiped out those who weren't vaccinated, leaving a society of the elderly (Enders) and the young (Starters), those More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 14, 2012

Meagan rated it:

This book is quite possibly everything wrong with YA.
1) First off, it borrows heavily, to say the least, from a late noughts television program which no one watched (Dollhouse)
2) However, it chastens it, makes it boring-- these borrowed bodies aren't for banging the gardner, natch
3) An ill-defined plot/world-building (if I hadn't read the author lived in Southern California, I would be convinced she'd never been to Southern California and she just picked Beverly Hills because peop More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2011

Imogen rated it:

I just read the chapter sampler for this book and am so frustrated that I can't read the rest yet!

I love the author's seamless worldbuilding. Within the first chapter I knew everything I needed to about the world, I knew what was driving the heroine, and I knew the choice she was going to be forced into making.

I still have questions about exactly how the world came to be like this, but I'm very happy for them to be slowly answered throughout the book rather than all shoved a More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 11, 2011

Sarah rated it:

I was really disappointed with the sample chapters of this book. The writing was wooden and awkward, and the world building was painfully weak and underdeveloped. One example: Main character, Callie, walks to Prime Destinations in the rain. Moments later, she sees a fountain of water and thinks, you'd think this stuff [water] was free.
Hello. It is, if you just walk out the front door.
Later, on her way home, she tells would-be robbers that she has no money.
Okay, no money. Got i More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 10, 2011

Maiko rated it:

I'm counting down the days until the official book release comes. I don't often read books for fun except for physical therapy textbooks or journal articles, or quality books like Harry Potter, but this one I wanted to see the rest of the book (I am so fortunate to get my hands on the chapter sampler). Right away on the first page, there were so many intriguing information that kept me turning the pages. People are living far longer than the current period. There is snazzy technology describ More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 10, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

I was given the chapter sample of this book and was quite intrigued by it. What a concept! But the reality, at least in those first chapters, let me down. The writing was only ok, the protagonist not much more than a Mary Sue, and the concept's execution was the greatest disappointment of all-- I had such high hopes! (Kind of like the movie In Time.)
What went right: Price effectively conveyed the horror of the protagonist's situation, the desperation, the grime, the unimaginably luxurious More...

2 comments like

Jan 29, 2012

Kristina rated it:

Starters by Lissa Price is an excitingly addictive story! After the Spore War that wiped out everyone not vaccinated (everyone ages 20-60), Callie Woodland, a sixteen-year-old unclaimed orphan, is living in an abandoned office building with her younger brother, Tyler. Life is terrible--running from renegades who would kill her just for a cookie, living in a cold, abandoned office building with no clean water, heat, or food, and hiding from marshals that want to institutionalize them and the othe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 22, 2012

Mary rated it:

Price's novel is well plotted, with an original premise. The Spore Wars have destoyed the world population. Only the vaccinated young & elderly survive. The world is controlled by the Enders, who can live to the ripe old age of 200. Teens ( Starters) orphaned and unclaimed are on the run from the Ender Marshalls who would institutionalize them. Forbidden to work or vote, the nation's youth are on the run, many surviving by resorting to gangs of Renegades. After the death of their parents, Call More...

0 comments like

Feb 20, 2012

Allison rated it:

The Hunger Games meets Gamer in this thrilling debut. Callie lives in a post-apocalyptic America where she is forced to live on the streets, fighting for scraps, squatting in abandoned buildings and running from the marshals. After the Spore War, all the adults between the age of 20 and 60 were wiped out, there were just the Starters and the Enders. Callie is a 16 year-old Starter desperate to protect her sick brother Tyler from the cruel world they have been thrown into after the devastation. S More...

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Feb 05, 2012

Samantha rated it:

Review:
Starters will leave you breathless. Everything about Starters is so well written and amazing, that you don't want to put the book down. It is an epic tale of a love so strong that she is willing to do anything for her brother. It touched me in the ways that she was so willing to do something that she detested for her brother.

Cover:
I love the cover! At first it freaked me out a little, but then, once I realised what that cover is I understood. I love the two differ More...

0 comments like

Feb 16, 2012

Emily rated it:

Yet another addition to the post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian triology genre; probably not a bad purchase if those are in high demand, but only if you've got everything else (Divergent, Delirum, Blood Red Road, and Matched are all better choices, not to mention many more that I haven't read). Part of the reason Starters is so disappointing is that it has such potential. The central plot conceit, a body bank where rich elderly people - Enders - can rent the beautiful, able bodies of teens, is a f More...

1 comment like

Feb 08, 2012

Filia rated it:

“Starters“ was a really intriguing read. Price’s characters seemed so real to me, each of them whit its own manifold personality, flaws and evil streaks included, that I loved accompanying Callie through her story. Also the moral issues of the gap between rich and poor and the absolute supremacy of the Elders in an aging society were fascinating as there were eerie parallels to our current society.
The book captured me from the first page on and I read it through in one sitting, because it More...

0 comments like

Feb 01, 2012

Wendy rated it:

When the Spore Wars came, only the elderly and the children under eighteen were vaccinated. Everyone else died. Now, the kids are known as Starters and the seniors known as Elders. The children, most who lost their parents to the vicious disease, either were on their own or their grandparents took custody. Those not so lucky were put in institutions. One of the laws in this 'new world' is that no one under eighteen is allowed to work. This leaves the money and jobs for the Elders but those More...

0 comments like

Feb 10, 2012

Chrissy rated it:

When I randomly requested STARTERS by Lissa Price on NetGalley, I admit that it was based solely on the cover. Yes, I don't deny it -- I *do* judge my books by their covers. And from the looks of this cover, I was expecting something youthful, fun, and exciting.

I was mostly right.

STARTERS is a futuristic thriller about a world in which everyone between the ages of 20 and 60 has been killed off after an event called "The Spore Wars". Vaccinations were limited, More...

0 comments like

Feb 22, 2012

Vernieda rated it:

+ The background is pretty cool. At some point in the future, war engulfed the world. During the war, a bioweapon was unleashed upon the U.S. that killed anyone who wasn't vaccinated against it. But because vaccines prioritize the young and the old, this meant everyone between the ages of 20 and 60 died. Now society is divided into two social classes: the young (Starters) and the old (Enders). Starters who have surviving Ender relatives (grandparents, great-grandparents, etc) have it made since More...

0 comments like

Jan 27, 2012

Laura rated it:

Yet another dystopian series (at least there's definitely a sequel in the works, if not more books). The twist here is that the Spore Wars (enemy unknown) have led to a situation where adults between 20 and 60 have essentially died off, and those minors without grandparents (or great-grandparents, or great-aunts/uncles) are either institutionalized or living as squatters. Because this is set in Los Angeles, there's an even greater disparity between the really rich of Beverley Hills and everyon More...

0 comments like

Jan 23, 2012

Jennifer rated it:

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to harsh on a book you don't like than it is to write something nice about one you love?

I'm not even sure where to start with this one. I'm a third of the way through and so far, I love it! Have to get back and finish it.

Update:
I'm done and feeling a bit deflated. This book was so good, so exciting, so fun, that once I started turning the pages of the last few chapters I made myself slow down, I tried to really savor ea More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2012

Julie-anne rated it:

Lissa Price has created quite a scary dystopian world in Starters. All the adults are dead, only people over 60 and kids have survived the spore wars. Kids with no grandparents are forced to either live on the streets since they can't work or get taken into an institution, which is basically like a slave camp for kids. Callie has her brother to look after and is forced into going to Prime Destinations to get money, but her rental malfunctions and she's forced to pretend to be her renter while More...

0 comments like

Feb 12, 2012

ABookVacation rated it:

Imagine a world where minors have no rights. Without a grandparent to claim them, any and all minors still alive after the Spore Wars are rounded up and sent to an institution, much like the worst labor camps known to man. But those who are able to allude the Marshalls have a chance to squat in abandon houses and remain free, even though their lives aren’t much better than those in the institution.

Enter Prime Destinations. Everything they’re doing is illegal, but so far under the More...

0 comments like

Feb 21, 2012

Yarethzia rated it:

so i finished this a while ago.. but the day it comes out is like a month or two away so I sha'll reread it and put up a review later >:D

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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