EDIT 02-08-2012: downgraded to 3 stars after comparing it to a lot of other 3,5/4 stars booksActual stars 3,5 (yeah I know, I seem to be giving these a lot lately...)Seriously, I don't know what it is lately but I just keep reading books that are hard to rate on a 5-star scale and this is definitely one of them.The concept of this book was ridiculously brilliant, as it is a romeo and juliet-like love story set within a dystopian alternative world where the darker-skinned hold the power and the lighter-skinned are basically rendered powerless...I know, it's sounds awesome. It was original (especially within the YA genre), relevant and provoking...and for that Blackman deserves my praise...That being said...I was really frustrated with the main love story between Sephy and Callum. They are obviously crazy about each other, but somehow they keep misunderstanding each other, which sets off a chain reaction of every kind of worst case scenario possible. At a certain moment I became really irrated with both protagonists. Bad things happen in this book, which I don't mind normally, but at a certain point it became more like a soap opera to me (e.g. Sephy becoming pregnant :S ), rather than a beautiful love tragedy. Personally, I would have liked more joyful moments between Sephy and Callum instead of the marathon of agony that I got.Also, I feel like the world could be a little bit more nuanced. The world presented was very black and white (no pun intended) and there wasn't enough grey characters presented (aside from the main characters of course, and maybe Callum's mom). There was certainly potential, with characters like Kemali Adams and Jack, but they were virtually unexplored. ...Actually, I think Minnie is one of the more interesting characters who could be that grey area and is relatively unexeplored...at least not until an Eye for an Eye I know this is dystopian fiction and therefore the world is automatically presented as very bleak. Perhaps Blackman did this on purpose to emphasise the hardships of interracial relationships and the blind hatred that racism is often accompanied with, but because so many bad things already happen to Sephy and Callum, the sum of it was just too much misery.So, seeing as I did enjoy it on some level, I normally would have given it three stars, right? But then I read the finale...and it was good! Not at all what I had expected...so then I thought...let's give it four stars instead, the ending just made it work...And then I read an Eye for an Eye (appended novella)...which was more of the above things I disliked about the book and thus it became the popular 3,5 stars I have been so keen on dishing out lately...
