Manal

I recommend sticking with it to the end. The dark matter/dark energy chapters are fascinating - could have expanded that to the whole book and I would have been happy. Otherwise, it's definitely not for the total science novice but I had enough physics and chemistry background to grasp most of the concepts. Really interesting but I know I won't remember most of it.

Useful to everyone, with caveats:

I'll start with the bad - The author had a good philosophy marred by a blind indifference to the stakes and consequences the average person considers when deciding whether to 9-5 it. But maybe that's the attitude you need to write this kind of book.

The good: While you're reading it you'll be motivated to think about what you want, why you want it, and to take action to get there, but not necessarily the steps in this book. It's not a how-to for everyone even though the author positions it that way. His approach is: here's how you should live your life, and here's the way I accomplished that. He doesn't really make it clear that there are ways other than his own, which can be discouraging if you can't see yourself taking his approach.

I'm being vague for a reason - if I knew his approach before I started reading I probably would never have picked it up, and would have missed out on a really valuable perspective.

Very quick read. I didn't realize this was YA until I started reading it, nothing against YA but I'd like to be prepared... the writing is pretty amateur but I read the interview with the author at the end of the book and she said she started writing it in high school - unfortunately it shows. A lot of exclamation points and italicized snarkiness. However the story is entertaining enough that I read all 400 pages so there's that. This is NOT for Game of Thrones fans. This is more like the Divergent series, a step above Twilight but not as good as Hunger Games. I am grateful it got me back into the high fantasy genre that I'd abandoned a few years ago. And I liked the story enough that I'm willing to read her new novels, with the expectation that her writing will have improved by now.