REVIEW: Renegade by J.A. Souders

Since the age of three, sixteen-year-old Evelyn Winters has been trained to be Daughter of the People in the underwater utopia known as Elysium. Selected from hundreds of children for her ideal genes, all her life she’s thought that everything was perfect; her world. Her people. The Law.

But when Gavin Hunter, a Surface Dweller, accidentally stumbles into their secluded little world, she’s forced to come to a startling realization: everything she knows is a lie.

Her memories have been altered.

Her mind and body aren’t under her own control.

And the person she knows as Mother is a monster.

Together with Gavin she plans her escape, only to learn that her own mind is a ticking time bomb... and Mother has one last secret that will destroy them all.

THE RUN-DOWN 
Evelyn Winters lives in Elysium, an underwater utopia that is perfect in every way. But when a Surface Dweller ends up in Elysium, Evie grows curious.
The Surface Dwellers are savages, the caused the war that almost ended the world.
Still Evie wonders if this is really true and begins to find out that the things she's been told, her life is a lie. 
And she also just so happens to decide to help the Surface Dweller escape...

MY THOUGHTS 
Yes, I realize that my "run-down" was not the best run-down but let's get to the point!
This book begins with everything all perfect, nice, pretty, shall I add another positive adjective?
But by the end of the book, Evie is living in a horror movie.
And you know what? I LOVED IT!!
I love the storylines where there's a utopian society that actually turns out to be dystopian! What can I say? I LOVE dystopians!
I also happen to like it when books have a splash of horror and this book had just that!
Now that can't possibly be the only thing I liked, right?
I also liked Evie's inner battle.
Throughout the whole book Evie has to fight herself.
She is losing her memories, and fighting to regain them.
Her mind for many moments in the book is not her own...
Then you add the fact that Evie also has battles outside of her mind at the same time.
I found her inner battles interesting. It showed the transition from perfect to horror movie.
It also brought that edge to the book.
Without Evie's inner battles this book wouldn't be as interesting and would probably put people to sleep.
In summary: I loved how Evie's inner battles were put into the story.

But, of course, there has to be things that I didn't like about the book.
Like Elysium, this book was not perfect.
As you must know, throughout almost the entire book is about Evie and Gavin's (who is the Surface Dweller) escape.
But to me it seems that it took too long for them to escape.
I realize that escaping would not be easy but i'm actually surprised that they didn't get caught (Not that I wanted them to get caught!).
One of the reasons why I felt that it took them awhile to escape is that at certain moments they discovered journal entries.
The entries were honestly important to what was going on but how long did it take them to read them?
They were on the run but I honestly don't think to it only took them a few minutes to read them.
It just makes me very curious...

I also must say that I didn't like the ending.
I WILL NOT be giving the ending away!
I am never happy when others tell me spoilers so I know that you will also not be happy with me if I give you spoilers.
Let's just say that it hit one of my pet peeves.
(It WAS NOT a cliffhanger by the way! Cliffhangers do happen to be one of my pet peeves but this ending did not contain one)

IN CONCLUSION 
I really did like this book!
You see those fuzzies? I don't give 4 fuzzies to every book!
In fact, if you took away that irking ending I would have probably give this book 5 FUZZBALLS!!!!
But sadly, endings are very important to me so I have to knock off that one star...

So...do I recommend this book? Heck yes!

I hereby give this book

4 Wheels

Meaning: It was AMAZING but not AWESOME.

Goodreads