I don’t know why I’ve waited so long to write this review, it’s been aaaaaaages (okay days, and I do know why: I’ve been way too busy to sit down and write a review).

Anyways, I bought the entire Slated Trilogy at Waterstones when I was in London last year because it was part of a 3 for 2 action (and one of the books was autographed for free, yay!), but hadn’t gotten around to reading any of them yet. Sometimes it’s quite risky to buy all three books in a trilogy at once, because you might hate the first one and end up never reading the last two. Luckily, this wasn’t at all the case with Slated. I loved it from the start!

Slated is a slow-building but very suspenseful novel about a young girl (Kyla) who has been Slated because she was labeled a terrorist in her ‘previous’ life. Now she has no memories and has to start over: she gets a new name, new town, new family. But Kyla isn’t like the other Slateds: always smiling, going along with everything, never questioning … When her memories start to return to her in terrifying dreams that make her Levo-levels drop to dangerous lows, hiding the ways she’s different from her peers and finding out the truth about herself become her greatest strifes. Who is there to trust with her struggles? Her ‘adoptive sister’ who was Slated years ago, Ben from her therapy group for Slateds, her new mother who is nicknamed ‘The dragon’ and has powerful family ties or her new father who’s always away from home and asking dangerous questions?

I loved the tension that’s just beneath the surface of this story. It made me want to stay up late at night to find out what happens next, just like a suspenseful dystopian YA novel ought to! What I found to be greatly refreshing about Slated is that it’s written in British English. I never realized before that practically all of the English books I read are written in American English … Now I do, and I’ll definitely try to pick up more novels written in British English, because it has so much more ‘couleur locale’ to it! It just sets a whole new atmosphere. I though the Levo-thingie (a wristband that measures your happiness/sadness/anger and blacks you out when you’re too sad or angry) was awesome and all the characters felt very real to me. This is how I imagine Ben by the way!

I did wish the end was a bit more of a cliffhanger so that I’d feel the immediate urge to start in the second book, but this was not the case. However, I’m sure I’ll start it soon anyways because I really enjoyed Slated and give it 4,5 stars!