Jax Reviews Snatched by Katherine McIntyre

Publisher: Jupiter Gardens Fiction
Format Read: ebook
Source: from author in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: November 11, 2014
Buying Links: Amazon* |  OmniLit* | Barnes & Noble |
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Blurb from goodreads:

When Kara was ten, the shifters took her parents.

A year ago, they took her best friend Hunter.

And now, the night before her first military strike against those monsters on the surface, the shifters take the only person she has left: her little sister Lizzy.

The snatched don’t come back. That’s what Kara’s believed her entire life, but the first person she finds above ground is the best friend she thought lost forever. Turns out, the higher ups lied. Other colonies are out there, hell even folks who toughed it up above. If anyone knows how to get her sister back, these people would. However, unless she can rally these surfacers into an army, one girl with a shotgun won’t survive long against the very creatures that overturned her world.

Jax's Thoughts:

I found this book confusing. The premise is interesting, I like the characters, but some of the details just don't add up to me. It's mainly due to the contradictory nature of the antagonists, The Shifters. Who are originally portrayed as somewhat animalistic. They'll rip you to shreds, and take time out of a fight to snack on a fallen foe. But later on you find out that they are actually intelligent, methodical genetic manipulators using humans as guinea pigs. I couldn't reconcile these two notions, and it disrupted the necessary suspension of disbelief for me to enjoy this kind of book. I would have liked to know more about them, to help fill in the gaps and perhaps make more sense of them.

The focus of the book is really more about Kara, who is like many other dystopian heroines. She doesn't see how smart and special she is, working so hard to shield her younger sister from the harsh reality of their situation. She has the requisite love triangle, with one rebel and one good soldier. Though she takes on two repressive regimes, each wrong in their own way, along with the creepy shifters. It's not the best YA dystopia, but it's decent.