Review: The Dazzling Heights by Katharine McGee

Hey all, Dani here.

This book just came out last week but I could not wait to start reading it. I went to my local Walmart and Meijer in the hopes that one of them would actually have new book releases, but yet again they failed me, something that happens far too often. And I didn’t want to wait the few days for it to come in the mail, nor did I want to make a 2 hour round trip to go to Barnes & Noble…so I just bought this one as an e-book and I’ll get the hardcover later.

I was pleasantly surprised by how addicted I was to the first book in this series, and so the wait for this book felt like an eternity.

Summary

New York City, 2118. A glittering vision of the future, where anything is possible – if you want it enough.

Manhattan is home to a thousand-story supertower, a beacon of futuristic glamour and high-tech luxury… and to millions of people living scandalous, secretive lives.

Leda is haunted by nightmares of what happened on the worst night of her life. She’s afraid the truth will get out – which is why she hires Watt, her very own hacker, to keep an eye on all of the witnesses for her. But what happens when their business relationship turns personal?

When Rylin receives a scholarship to an elite upper-floor school, her life transforms overnight. But being here also means seeing the boy she loves: the one whose heart she broke, and who broke hers in return.

Avery is grappling with the reality of her forbidden romance – is there anywhere in the world that’s safe for them to be together?

And then there’s Calliope, the mysterious, bohemian beauty who’s arrived in New York with a devious goal in mind – and too many secrets to count.

Here in the Tower, no one is safe – because someone is watching their every move, someone with revenge in mind. After all, in a world of such dazzling heights, you’re always only one step away from a devastating fall….

My Thoughts

Rating: 4.5 stars

We get to delve deeper into the lives of Avery, Rylin, Leda, and Watt, plus we get to know new character Calliope. Normally I am not the type of person who likes stories that are really about the drama of relationships and friendships and such. This is what I would imagine from a show like Gossip Girl or Pretty Little Liars or something. (For the record I have not seen either of those shows).

But I find the concept to be so interesting, and the structure of the supertower society is just fascinating to me. New York of 2118 is glitzy and treacherous and purely addictive, or at least that’s how I felt.

Every time I put this book down I found myself thinking about what I had read, and wondering what would happen next. I wanted to know what secrets would be revealed, how all the characters stories would entertwine, and which character would end up dead by the end.

Because yes, this book also starts with a mysterious death, and a bit of a description of a girl all dressed up and obviously dead. Then we jump back two months and pick up the story about a month after the events of The Thousandth Floor.

Obviously all of the characters are still dealing with what happened in the last book, and they are all dealing with the ramifications in different ways. Though there is a lot of secret keeping and blackmail involved.

Okay Avery’s romantic plotline continues to be something that annoys me. And Leda’s thinking that everyone is out to get her gets aggravating at times. I continue to root for Rylin and hope that things go well for her. I also like following Watt and I hope everything works out with his dream of going to MIT and that nothing goes wrong because of Nadia. Calliope was an interesting new addition to the cast, and I loved that she was actually connected to it all through Atlas. Plus having a con artist in the group was entertaining.

I’m not going to say more about the characters or the plot because I don’t want to risk spoilers. I will say that I liked that we got to leave the Tower a bit more this time around. Yes, in the first book there was a trip to Paris, but in this book we get to see Los Angeles and Nevada as well.

So this series is pretty much a guilty pleasure read for me and I’m actually really glad I was convinced by the book community to give it a try.

Where to Buy

You can pick up The Dazzling Heights from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, Book Depository, or your local indie bookstore.