The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee

Synopsis

“WELCOME TO MANHATTAN, 2118. A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. Everyone there wants something…and everyone has something to lose.

LEDA COLE’s flawless exterior belies a secret addiction—to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched.

ERIS DODD-RADSON’s beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart.

RYLIN MYERS’s job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world—and a romance—she never imagined…but will this new life cost Rylin her old one?

WATT BAKRADI is a tech genius with a secret: he knows everything about everyone. But when he’s hired to spy for an upper-floor girl, he finds himself caught up in a complicated web of lies.

And living above everyone else on the thousandth floor is AVERY FULLER, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all—yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have. Amid breathtaking advancement and high-tech luxury, five teenagers struggle to find their place at the top of the world. But when you’re this high up, there’s nowhere to go but down….”

-Synopsis from Goodreads

Review

How great is that cover? The Thousandth Floor has been one of the most unexpectedly intriguing books I have ever read. Many of the Goodreads reviews I read beforehand stated that it was like a futuristic Gossip Girl, and although I never read that series, for some reason I was thinking it would be more of a high school drama than anything else. Turns out, there is way more going on in this book than I would have ever expected.

It was a little hard to keep track of the rotating perspectives at first. There are a bunch of characters the reader is introduced to in the first fifty pages or so, and lots of different, sometimes intertwining storylines.

This story itself is so imaginative and well-written. Even though I have never been to New York, I easily felt as though I had been based on the description of the city. The technology was believable and just as advanced as one might expect for 2118 (think hover cars, retinal scans to access anything and everything, even robots) but what hasn’t changed by this point in time? Human nature, teenagers, love, the whole shebang, and that is where this story lies.

I loved this book and am eager to read the next two in the trilogy soon.