Gravity by Melissa West

Summary (from Goodreads):

In the future, only one rule will matter:

Don’t. Ever. Peek.

Seventeen-year-old Ari Alexander just broke that rule and saw the last person she expected hovering above her bed — arrogant Jackson Locke, the most popular boy in her school. She expects instant execution or some kind of freak alien punishment, but instead, Jackson issues a challenge: help him, or everyone on Earth will die.

Ari knows she should report him, but everything about Jackson makes her question what she’s been taught about his kind. And against her instincts, she’s falling for him. But Ari isn’t just any girl, and Jackson wants more than her attention. She’s a military legacy who’s been trained by her father and exposed to war strategies and societal information no one can know — especially an alien spy, like Jackson. Giving Jackson the information he needs will betray her father and her country, but keeping silent will start a war.

Review:

So, this book definitely had 3 things going for it, right off the bat: 1) a gorgeous cover, 2) dystopian elements, and 3) some dark sci-fi plot arcs. I was expecting to just eat this one up. And well, I kind of did.

The whole concept of an alien race coming into your room every night and sucking some of your energy is just so beyond terrifying. Ari knows its something you just have to get used to. But, deep down, you know it always freaks her out. Can you imagine putting a helmet on every night before 10 pm and knowing some stranger you can never see, will have access to you. So, so creepy.

And then just when you kind of get used to the creepy aliens and the contract they have with the humans, West turns everything around. The humans kind of become the bad guys. They don’t want to hold to their end of the contract. They refuse to co-exist with aliens. And in the time the aliens are getting used to the environment and going into bedrooms to do whatever it is they need to do, the children/teens of earth are all being trained on how to fight.

Ari has been trained every day in the art of fighting, defending, and beating aliens. She’s kind of in a military family, and spends nowhere close to enough time sleeping, and way too much time trying to appease her strict father and fight better. The book is loaded with training sessions, fighting, tests, simulations, and all kind of work. There’s also school bombings, air-born viruses, death, and a lot of political propaganda. When Ari gets to know the ancient (alien) assigned to her, her whole life changes.

I kind of liked that the humans ended up being really bad. They refused to accept anyone that was different and went to extremes to get rid of differences. But all in all, both aliens and humans ended up killing innocent people. Though, I do think a lot of lives would have been spared if the humans actually held up their end of the bargain.

I loved learning about the ancients alongside Ari. I loved how Ari was willing to take note of where she was wrong. Nothing is set in stone with her, and it’s so nice having a main character who is so willing to learn. I kept expecting this book to go a certain way, and it didn’t. And I’m actually really pleased that it didn’t have the same storyline as a lot of other similar sci-fi’s. Though, I did still predict most, if not all of the big twists (like who certain characters really were).

I wasn’t an enormous fan of the romance. I kind of kept waiting for the power couple to have more in common, or to grow closer. Instead, they kind of just instantly were a couple without much buildup. Granted there’s a lot of suspense going on, but still. I just didn’t take Ari for the instant love kind of character. Not that I didn’t love Jackson. I did. I just wish their relationship was built upon something besides him keeping an eye on her all the time, over the years. It’s another kind of stalker-like romance to add to the instant love YA titles (at least another romance where the boy watches the main character sleep).

Besides the romance though, I did really enjoy this one. I found the characters entertaining, the plot suspenseful enough to make you not want to put it down, and the story itself, rather unique. I give it an 8/10.