FROZEN: HEART OF DREAD
BY MELISSA DE LA CRUZ & MICHAEL JOHNSTON

Genre: YA, Dystopian, Post-Apoctalyptic,Fantasy, Sci-fi (basically so many different ones)

Source: Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Series: Heart of Dread

Synopsis:
Welcome to New Vegas, a city once covered in bling, now blanketed in ice. Like much of the destroyed planet, the place knows only one temperature—freezing. But some things never change. The diamond in the ice desert is still a 24-hour hedonistic playground and nothing keeps the crowds away from the casino floors, never mind the rumors about sinister sorcery in its shadows.

At the heart of this city is Natasha Kestal, a young blackjack dealer looking for a way out. Like many, she’s heard of a mythical land simply called “the Blue.” They say it’s a paradise, where the sun still shines and the waters are turquoise. More importantly, it’s a place where Nat won’t be persecuted, even if her darkest secret comes to light.

But passage to the Blue is treacherous, if not impossible, and her only shot is to bet on a ragtag crew of mercenaries led by a cocky runner named Ryan Wesson to take her there. Danger and deceit await on every corner, even as Nat and Wes find themselves inexorably drawn to each other. But can true love survive the lies? Fiery hearts collide in this fantastic tale of the evil men do and the awesome power within us all. [Goodreads]

Special thanks to Orchard Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of this book for review!

This book is packed full of a wide variety of things including magic, pirates, military, small men, boats, marked people and a thing called a Drakon (similar to a dragon). It also had a hard time deciding what genre it wanted to belong to, I think I have decided I would categorize it as Post-Apocalyptic Urban Fantasy (I think)

The concepts of this book were awesome. The world has frozen over and the form of currency is Watts. That is the most basic of the storyline and then it starts to continue more and more information and issues. There are people with special powers who are called “the marked” they are regarded as unwanted and lesser people. They are trying to return to there homeland The Blue. Nat the main character is marked and hires some guys to help her escape to The Blue and they run into many situations including the army, slavers and the trash burgs. As you can see the story is just loaded with many things. I am having a hard time trying to write a review for this because as much as I wanted to like it and thought it had some really interesting and unique ideas, I felt like the execution overall was confusing and tried to achieve to much.

The world building was done throughout the whole book and I felt like too much was going on that I had to keep stopping and remind myself of the backstory and how everything that was happening tied back into current events. I had to start listening to this as an audiobook which than made the book a little more enjoyable for me. The characters were interesting, but I had to keep reminding myself that they were only 16 years old. I felt like they should have been older as they were running around with guns and taking people as slaves and acting like adult, but were only 16 yrs old. I think this hard a part in my disappointment for the book as a whole.

The beginning had promise then it got boring and confusing and did get a little better at the end. The romances were also a tad insta love and annoying and typical bad boy who plans against the girl and than goes against all his morales because he fell for the girl.

Overall this book just really let me down and tried to attempt to be too much and could have been great. The characters were underdeveloped, the genre was too confusing, the romance was annoying and overall the execution of the story ultimately ruined it for me.

Sorry for a really confusing review. If you have read this I would love to hear your thoughts. Even if you liked it I would love to discuss it and see if it can help me piece the story together a little. 

Audiobook review: 4/5

It was narrated by both a male and female that switched with the change between the two main characters. I thought they did a wonderful job with the overall presentation and were nice to listen to!