The Evaporation of Sofi Snow

I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing. I had read the summary before requesting the ARC and was interested at the time but never reread it before picking up the book. The book started off right in the action with Sofi and her brother, Shilo battling against other kids in a tournament involving survival as well as virtual reality and coding. At the beginning I was getting huge Hunger Games vibes which I really did not enjoy. But luckily the tournament portion of the book was brief.

We then are left with Sofi on this journey to save Shilo. But to save him she must first find him. This book was nonstop action and adventure which I really enjoyed. Mary Weber is an excellent action scene writer and I always felt like I was in the thick of everything as Sofi searches for clues.

The big issue I had with this book was the worldbuilding. We are thrown right into the action with little background on the tournament or these characters and what they have gone through. We do get some information in roundabout ways about the characters and their situations but it was not at all enough for me. I even felt like the aliens were poorly explained and developed. I know they were humanoid but larger but that tells me nothing about them as a species. The book also mentioned things and technology the aliens gave to help Earth but with little explanation or understanding of what the true relationship between the two species is.

While this is more than one book and there is definitely time for further explanation, I think this book would have benefited from better worldbuilding before jumping into the action of the story. This book also ends on a bit of a cliffhanger one that did not phase me. I did not become attached to these characters so I was in no way shocked by the ending nor do I feel like the wait for the next book will be far too long. Overall, this was a good book, I just could not overlook the lack of worldbuilding and setting up the story and the characters. If you can overlook that, then I'm sure you will really enjoy this book.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of the book