RATING: 9.5/10
Hello Again!
After a long break, I'm thrilled to be back to writing on my blog, with another book review. I was actually fortunate enough to receive a free e-Arc of Capsule from Mel in exchange for an honest review of this novel, so I'm excited to share what I've been reading for the past couple weeks!
I'm also going to be trying out a new format with reviewing this novel, where I separate the different parts of it I'll be reviewing (characters, plot, themes, and writing style) into sections. Each section will also be sorted by spoilers and non-spoilers. I hope you enjoy!
So, What The Heck Is This Book About?
Capsule follows Jackie Mendoza, a sixteen-year-old girl, who prefers spending hours gaming in her room over talking to any of her classmates. She hardly even notices when two of them, the popular girl Kat Pike, and the social outcast Peter Moon, go missing. At least until Capsule, a mysterious app only she can see, offers a way for her to get them back. All she has to do is win a video game in 24 hours and the duo will be returned home safely.
What follows is a game unlike Jackie has ever played. One filled with real life adventures, dangers, and most importantly unlikely friendships. But if she plays the game wrong Jackie risks losing a silly game, but the new friends she's just found.
The Characters
Quite frankly, I found all of the main characters to be the best part of this novel! A lot of them fit into stereotypical teen archetypes: Jackie was the loner, Peter was the outcast, and Kat was the pretty popular girl. Despite this each character's arc and personality took on a unique twist on these archetypes, causing the characters to feel more realistic than many other teen novels and movies I've read or watched.
Secondly, I really enjoyed the smaller cast in this novel. The bulk of the novel centers around Peter, Kat, and Jackie, exploring their pasts, personalities, and relationships. Sure there are a few other secondary characters like Jay (Jackie's brother) and Nicholas (Peter's uncle) who play a large role in the story, but ultimately the amount of secondary characters is significantly limited.
As a result, each character which did show up in the novel was truly given the space and time to breathe. In other words, without a sea of characters, Torrefranca was able to really focus on Kat, Jackie, and Peter, allowing for more depth to be given to each character. As someone who prefers smaller ensembles and well-fleshed out characters, I appreciated this a lot when reading since it felt like I knew every single character I encountered very well.
CHARACTER SPOILERS
Going into more depth about what I said before, I thoroughly enjoyed the ways in which each character was fleshed out since I felt as though I hadn't really read about these types of arcs before in novels.
For example, instead of portraying Kat as nothing more than a mean popular girl, Torrefranca chose to have a very interesting twist. Kat can't feel. After her sister dies, she can't bring herself to cry and only fakes it when others are watching to fit in. As a result, she resorts to doing extremely risky things, so that she can glimpse, even for a moment, what it's like to feel the slightest jolt of adrenaline. Quite simply, that concept fascinated me and the choice to narrate certain chapter's from Kat's perspective only fueled my interest, since I was able to see how much of a significant role it played in Kat's life.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the constant questions of Jackie's motivations as to why she chose to play Capsule. Did she view it as just another game for her to play or genuinely care about Kat and Peter? It helped show the main characters' doubts about Jackie while also highlighting how Jackie slowly begins to realize that she does care about other people and can make friends.
END OF SPOILERS
All in all, the characters were one of the best parts of this novel and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about them!
Plot
This section is going to be slightly shorter than characters because I have a lot less to write about it! To put it simply I found the plot mostly to be well paced and interesting. There wasn't really any point where I felt that the novel was slow or disengaging. So, I would say overall that Mel did a great job with keeping the novel well-paced.
However, my major critique towards this novel's plot would be its stakes, which could have been a little higher. There was a timer which had the potential to make the characters rush towards the end of the story and really scare the readers into thinking that with so little time left, the characters wouldn't be able to make it. However, the timer was never really utilized to increase the stakes as much as it could have.
PLOT SPOILERS
Additionally, towards the end of the novel there was a scene where the characters dropped their mission to go to a party. While I understand what this scene was trying to do from a character, relationship, and thematic stand point, plot wise it didn't make sense for the characters to drop their mission given how high the stakes were at this point, so I found it a bit unrealistic to read.
END OF SPOILERS
That being said, I felt that every twist in this novel was very well done and it kept me on the edge of my seat. So I would say that overall the plot was well-executed.
Writing Style
I want to clarify at the beginning of this section that this is my first time reading an e-Arc. As a result, I'm not sure how many typos are edited before publication and how many are left in, so I'm going to be a bit more lenient in this aspect. Essentially, there were a few more typos than I'd see in most published books, but I didn't let this impact my rating of the novel since I'm going to assume most will be fixed before publication.
Typos aside, I think that the writing style could've been a bit better in this novel. The prose was clean and easy to read most of the time but there were some techniques such as telling and lacking more sensory descriptions that could've been improved on.
However, I do think the author's craft is something that will naturally improve with time as she writes more books. I also want to stress that none of these craft level problems ever interfered with my ability to enjoy the novel. To be frank, if I wasn't so trained to look for these details because I'm working on fixing them in my own novel I probably wouldn't have noticed as much as I did!
Themes
I loved the themes in this novel! First off, I found the connection between Capsule and Jackie's gaming addiction to fascinating, it shed some important details on Jackie's character arc while also questioning the game as a whole.
Additionally, I found the focus on friendship over romance in a YA novel to be very refreshing. The themes of this novel heavily focused on friendship to the point where I found the friendships more engaging than the small romance in the book (something which rarely happens in other YA novels I read given how much depth the romance is given over friendships). Torrefranca also made sure that these relationships and themes were more nuanced and interesting so that they didn't just feel like the classic "friendship beats everything" found in a lot of kids books.
Lastly, although this point is less of a theme, the novel felt very authentic to teens as opposed to an adult trying to mimic how teens act today. The references to various youtubers and way the teens talked felt very accurate for how me and my friends talk, which was a nice touch to see in the novel.
What's the Rating Then?
In summary, I loved this book. I was a bit nervous going into it because I enjoy Mel's youtube videos and she actually helped me decide to self-publish my book so I didn't want to have to write a bad review. Fortunately, that wasn't the case given how much Capsule blew away my expectations with its incredible characters and intriguing plot!
In terms of an actual rating I would give Capsule a 9.5/10 because although it did have some slight issues when it came to writing craft and pacing, the overall themes, characters, and tension in the novel made it super fun to read. I'd recommend anyone who enjoys YA thrillers and adventure novels to go check it out.
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