For once I am writing a review just minutes after finishing a book rather than waiting weeks and relying on my notes to write the review. SO THIS BOOK IS FRESH IN MY BRAIN! And just wow! This book was terrific. I can’t believe that I put off reading it for so long because of the hype. Let me just say this: Scythe definitely lives up to the hype that surrounded it.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

This is the second book by Schusterman that I had read, the first one being Unwind (and boy, that was just weird!) Schusterman carries on writing about weird and wonderful worlds in Scythe where humanity has conquered death and disease. This was a fantastic book that was written at the perfect pace throughout. It wasn’t slow and then went really fast or vice versa, it was a nice pace throughout the whole novel. Let me just get the moan out of the way first and tell you why this wasn’t a five star, but a 4.5: the ‘romance’. Ok, well it isn’t even romance per se… You know the characters like each other but they aren’t actually together? So they’re both crushing on each other through the entirety of the book and it’s not until the very end where they actually acknowledge these feelings. For me, there was no need for a romance element between the two characters to even be suggested because they weren’t really by each other for most of the book anyway. So yeah, there was no point. Schusterman could have just left out the insinuation of romance and kept it as a low-level friendship; that would have been much better.

“I think all young women are cursed with a streak of unrelenting foolishness, and all young men are cursed with a streak of absolute stupidity.”

― Neal Shusterman, Scythe

Ok, little moan out of the way. Now onto the complete fangirling. JUST. WOW. I absolutely love this world so much. I wouldn’t want to live in it myself because waiting to get ‘gleaned’ by a scythe would give me so much anxiety. But in a fictional sense, yes this is an absolutely brilliant, well-thought-out world that gives me the heebie-jeebies. I can’t wait to read more about this world in the next book, Thunderhead, which is ALREADY OUT BUT I DO NOT OWN IT AND THAT MAKES ME VERY SAD.

I loved all of the characters in this book and even the ‘evil’ ones, I loved to hate them because they were just sooooo bad. They didn’t even have a reason, to be honest for being like that, they just loved killing so much. For Scythe Goddard and his team not to have a good reason for going on killing sprees just makes them that much scarier because they are so irrational. I really did love the character of Citra, Rowan not so much because he annoyed me half the time, but Citra was a hard-working, flawed female character and I loved her for it. She wasn’t some ‘chosen one’ who mastered the art of Scythedom straight away. She worked hard at it – made some stupid decisions along the way – but she worked hard. AND CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE CHARACTERS OF SCYTHE FARRADY AND SCYTHE CURIE?! I absolutely loved their characters. They were tough teachers yet they were fair, strong and kind and I have nothing but love for them. Especially when we find out their backstory; it made me cry so much.

Overall, this was a fantastic novel that I had the pleasure of reading in a few days (would have been less but I was bedridden with the flu!) Apart from the romance-ish parts, Shusterman has written a near-perfect book that captured my attention and my heart and I cannot wait to read the next book and find out what happens to my beloved characters.