Legend (Legend, #1)
June is a genuine prodigy of the Republic of America, and she's being groomed for service in the war against the Colonies. Day is the Republic's most wanted criminal. Their paths cross when Day is suspected of committing a crime that makes June very upset. She vows to track him down, so then of course they fall in love and uncover conspiracies and such, as one does in these types of situations.
It's the length of this book that saves it, that and the premise, which is a solid one. You're so busy racing through the book that you don't really stop to question the logistics, or where you've seen the story before (lots of places). Actually, that helps as well. It's a familiar slide: the boy and girl born on opposite sides of a war, set in a now very familiar dystopic future born from the same carbon copy template as every other future dystopia on the market. And because it's familiar, again, we rush through, waiting for the expected story beats to come, and when they do, it's satisfying. Tropes occur over and over again for a reason: because we want them to.
If Lu had tried to make this more complex or character driven instead of the fast-paced thriller it is, it probably wouldn't have worked. As is, we get just enough information to want more, and not enough to really notice there's nothing all that original in this book -- it's more like a skillful mish-mash of lots of different stories Lu has pulled from everywhere she can think of. It's not trying to be a deep meditation on war or love or identity or some shit like that -- it's just a popcorn dystopian romance with a little murder mystery and governmental conspiracy thrown in for good measure. If I thought it was trying to be more, I would have been super harsh on it, but I think it succeeds in what it was trying to do. So, four stars.
The only thing that blipped on my believability radar was the meet-cute, which turned our prodigy heroine, June, into a passive idiot, just so Lu could have her fall for Day before she knew who he was. She's this brilliant military prodigy, you'd think she'd be able to track her suspect down instead of having him handed to her by God or Fate or whatever. But no, first we have sexytimes, then betrayal, then REVOLUTION.
Anyway, book two comes out in January, and I'm totally there, even though I could probably predict exactly what's going to happen without even reading it. Because I can tell the future! Either that, or it's just super obvious. You pick.