e-ARC Review of The Leveller by Julia Durango

Release Date: June 23, 2015

Publisher: HarperCollins

Page Count: 256

Format: e-ARC

Genre: YA 

Nixy Bauer is a self-made Leveller. Her job? Dragging kids out of virtual reality and back to their parents in the real world. It’s normally easy cash, but Nixy’s latest mission is fraught with real danger, intrigue, and romance.
Nixy Bauer is used to her classmates being very, very unhappy to see her. After all, she’s a bounty hunter in a virtual reality gaming world. Kids in the MEEP, as they call it, play entirely with their minds, while their bodies languish in a sleeplike state on the couch. Irritated parents, looking to wrench their kids back to reality, hire Nixy to jump into the game and retrieve them. 
But when the game’s billionaire developer loses track of his own son in the MEEP, Nixy is in for the biggest challenge of her bounty-hunting career. Wyn Salvador isn’t some lazy kid looking to escape his homework: Wyn does not want to be found. And he’s left behind a suicide note. Nixy takes the job but quickly discovers that Wyn’s not hiding—he’s being held inside the game against his will. But who is holding him captive, and why?
Nixy and Wyn attempt to fight their way out of a mind game unlike any they’ve encountered, and the battle brings them closer than either could have imagined. But when the whole world is virtual, how can Nixy possibly know if her feelings are real?
Gamers and action fans of all types will dive straight into the MEEP, thanks to Julia Durango’s cinematic storytelling. A touch of romance adds some heart to Nixy’s vivid, multidimensional journey through Wyn’s tricked-out virtual city, and constant twists keep readers flying through to the breathtaking end.

*an e-ARC of this book was given to me via Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and honest review*

Disappointing. That's the main word I would use to describe The Leveller by Julia Durango and all its elements. From the moment I saw the interesting description and cover of The Leveller I had high hopes for it. My previous encounters with virtual reality had gone pretty well (like Elusion for example) but this book was a wake-up call. In fact, I couldn't even finish it, I had to DNF it at around the 35% mark. I kept comparing it to Elusion and Etherworld because of its similarities to the two but doing so only made it harder for me to keep reading. The virtual reality in Elusion just seemed so much more developed than the one in The Leveller and  as if more detail had been put into it. On top of that there was the writing style, I'm not sure if it was the style or the way she worded it but it it was unbearable and drastically decreased the quality of the book. Same goes for the characters, the premise of the main character is interesting (sort of a virtual bounty hunter) but there was nothing to make the characters stand out and keep me interested. Perhaps if I had kept reading the book might have improved but I just couldn't keep forcing myself to continue. In all honesty I wouldn't recommend The Leveller to anyone either. I wanted to like The Leveller, I really did but the multitude of negatives it contained brought it down.

1/5 - DNF'ed