The Girl with all the gifts

No Spoiler Review of The Girl with all the Gifts

 

Melanie is definitely a special 10 year old.  She lives on a military base, "where every morning she waits in her cell to be collected for class.  When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair.  She thinks they don't like her."  This is a quote from the book.    Melanie enjoys going to class though especially when Miss. Justinueau is her teacher.  Miss Justinueau tales storys to the kids about Pandora, Winnie the Pooh and a multitude of other tales.   The kids enjoy when she is there verses some of the other teachers.   Some of the other characters are Dr. Caldwell, who is a scientist, and only cares about anything that will further her research.   Sergeant Parks is certainly the stern military presence.  

 

The world building in this book is pretty good.  I certainly could imagine what was going on throughout the entire book.  I did listen to this book on audio through my public library.   The characters were pretty well developed, except a few that were pretty much there for plot changes. 

 

I do feel like this book is longer than it needed to be.  I became really bored a little more than half way through and did not feel like it added anything to the story.  The ending of the book was probably the only way the book could end and wasn't a huge surprise.  I did feel that the language throughout the book was unnecessary and really did not add anything to the character building.   As a mother, I'm not sure that I would let my younger teenager kids read this book.  It would have to be a case by case situation and their maturity.   There is also a lot of violence and situations where it could be too much for younger kids.

 

Overall, I'm not sure what I was expecting.  I picked this book up because I saw they were making it into a movie and wanted to read the book first.   However, I am not sure at this point that I have any desire to see the movie.   Curious to know what you think of the book or if you have seen the movie?