Oh, what a marvellous, breathtaking read.

Since the very beginning, we have no idea of what’s going on. A boy, called Thomas, “lands” in the Glade not remembering where he comes from or even the smallest detail about his life up to that moment. The Glade (for you to know) is a place full of male teenagers who call themselves the Gladers and who try to live their lives as best as they can, forming a society. Every boy in the Glade has a job, contributing to the general welfare and, once a month, supplies and clothes are delivered through the Box (a sort of metal elevator) together with a new boy who has have his memory wiped. This place is surrounded by huge walls made of stone. Each morning, these walls open showing what lies outside them: the limitless, ever-changing maze, and if Thomas wants to get out of that creepy place, he and the other Gladers have to solve it.  Yet, things are not that easy. Two years have passed since the first Glader appeared and since then, no one has ever been able to solve it or live through a night outside in the Maze, where eerie creatures prowl in the dark. However, now that Thomas has arrived, things are starting to change, even to the point that the very next day, a girl appears in the Glade. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.

So let’s talk about my feelings towards this book: at the beginning, it was not easy to get yourself involved with the story. No one wants to answer Thomas’s questions (and therefore, mine) and that made me feel frustrated and anxious at the same time. Not to mention that the characters use some kind of strange lexicon to refer to things which, at first, is rather annoying and difficult to understand, making you wonder what the hell they are talking about. But as the story goes on and on, you end up getting accustomed to these made-up words and you realize (or at least, I realized) that they add an extra and rather unique value to this marvellous book. After finishing those pretty boring first chapters, the story became fast-paced and started to add more and more suspense and thrilling moments, filling me up with surprises every time I turned over a page and giving me goose bumps with every ending.

Regarding the writing style, I found myself really enjoying it. Dashner has a wonderful way of narrating events and his descriptions are full and concise, he doesn’t add unnecessary words, something I truly love. Moreover, I adore authors who manage to keep the tension towards the last sentences of a chapter, making your heart stop once you’ve read the last phrase, and James achieves it completely!

This is a wonderful and gripping tale about how to keep hopes up even when every light goes out and it seems there is no possible exit. You won’t want to put the book down until you finish it. It keeps you guessing what’s going on to the very ending!

Thank you for reading! Kisses

Annabelle.