The Thousandth Floor
My Rating: Liked It
Published by: HarperCollins on August 30th 2016
Genres: Coming of Age, Light Romance, Mature Young Adult, Science Fiction, Thillers & Suspense, Young Adult
ISBN: 0062418599
ASIN: B019C3S97Q
Pages: 448
Series: The Thousandth Floor #1
Content Warning: sexual content, drug and alcohol use, and/or violence make this title appropriate for readers 18 and over.
New York City as you’ve never seen it before.
A thousand-story tower stretching into the sky. A glittering vision of the future, where anything is possible—if you want it enough.
Welcome to Manhattan, 2118.A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. But people never change: everyone here wants something…and everyone has something to lose.
Leda Cole’s flawless exterior belies a secret addiction—to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched.
Eris Dodd-Radson’s beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart.
Rylin Myers’s job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world—and a romance—she never imagined…but will her new life cost Rylin her old one?
Watt Bakradi is a tech genius with a secret: he knows everything about everyone. But when he’s hired to spy by an upper-floor girl, he finds himself caught up in a complicated web of lies.
And living above everyone else on the thousandth floor is Avery Fuller, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all—yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have.
Amid breathtaking advancement and high-tech luxury, five teenagers struggle to find their place at the top of the world.
But when you’re this high up, there’s nowhere to go but down…
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Okay, so, I’ll admit that I picked up this book at my local library because of all the buzz about it. It made me a little curious and I thought I’d give it a try. And, I must say, I have mixed feelings about The Thousandth Floor, the debut novel by Katharine McGee.
I thought it would be more of a dystopian-thriller/mystery. I knew a girl would die and got the impression from the first story blurb I read for the book many months ago that there would be some type of investigation or something of the like. Instead it was a weird day-in-the-life thing about a handful of teenagers living in the “Tower” in New York City a hundred years in the future.
Not that playing voyeur wasn’t fun. These teens have some seriously messed up lives, which, of course, makes for great reading! The dead girl isn’t much of a spoiler since you learn about her in the prologue. But some other things might be, so I’ve hidden anything you might not want to peek at behind the spoiler tag. But you know me, I don’t give out too much dirt in my reviews. Better for you to read the book and experience it first hand, and that’s never been more true than in the case of The Thousandth Floor.
The characters were interesting and well developed. They were flawed, big time. They weren’t always likeable, but that’s part of what made them believable. And they weren’t always relatable, either, but that worked too.
There’s Eris who gets the shock of her life when she learns that View Spoiler ». Eris was kind of a whiner in my opinion and tended to get on my nerves at times, but in the end, I did feel for her. She really had a rough time of things. Then you have Avery. Perfect, perfect Avery. Who is in love with View Spoiler ». I’m not sure why I put that behind a spoiler tag. The reader finds out fairly quickly in the book who her secret crush is, but it’s just more fun if you wait and read it yourself. And Leda. Poor delusional, Leda. That girl is a hot mess. She’s totally in love with Atlas, who View Spoiler », of course, is in love with someone else. The only thing Leda loves more than Atlas is drugs, which causes a lot of headaches for everyone. And Riley and Mariel and Watt… they just get caught up in the whirlwind of the highliers’ life. Pulled along… and pulled down by their excesses and lies.
In addition to the interesting characters, McGee gives the reader plenty of nifty, futuristic gadgets to imagine. Everything from princess dresses that change color with the wave of a magic wand, to 3D body imaging to “try-on” clothes, and invisible floating microhovers that hold candles for candlelit dinners. But my favorite? Floating bubbles filled with liquor for everyone to stick their straws into and sip from… yes, communal liquor bubbles. Only in NYC, huh? And, of course, the bots! Bots everywhere. From sanitation to cleaning, even Zen garden bots.
The Thousandth Floor was unusual and unique. The copy was fairly error free. I only found a few. The formatting was nice and easy to read. I enjoyed the author’s writing style for the most part. I did have trouble with all the adverbs used. Guiltily and haltingly and mutinously and so on. In some areas, the author showed me things, using beautiful prose…
She liked the way the French fell on her ears, mellifluous and soft. It sounded the way honey tasted.
That evokes a response. The sweetness of honey. It’s thick richness. But, then there were other times that I was told things…
Rylin jumped, holding the Spokes guiltily behind her back.
Or another example…
Avery smiled at that. “Who knows? Maybe you’re right,” she said opaquely.
It just doesn’t resonate the same as this does…
Her need was like an itch crawling desperately over her skin. In some part of her mind, she registered this as a warning flag, but she’d deal with it later, when her chest wasn’t so tight.
Despite the adverbs, reading about the characters, their lives, the lies they told, and how those lies unraveled bit by bit was strangely addicting. I’d tell myself, “Just one more chapter then I’ll stop and make dinner…” but one chapter turned into two, which turned into four, which turned into 320 pages and take-out.
Another thing that kept me turning page after page was my need to know what happened to the girl in the prologue. Who was she? Did she jump? Was she pushed? Did she merely slip? With each page I read, I tensed, waiting for some morsel of information about her. But there was nothing. It was so frustrating I wanted to throw the book across the room, which of course I didn’t do because we don’t harm books, but I imagined it! It was irritating and frustrating in the best sort of way.
Bottom line: Despite the book not being what I thought it would be when I started reading, I did like it. I think it would have made a nice standalone. I’m interested, though, to see where McGee takes the next installment of the series.
About Katharine McGee
Katharine McGee is originally from Houston, Texas. She studied English and French literature at Princeton University and has an MBA from Stanford. It was during her years in New York, working as an editor by day and writing by night, that she began a manuscript about life in a futuristic skyscraper. The Thousandth Floor is her first novel.
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