Review: LOOP by Karen Akins

Rating: 4/5 stars

I enjoyed this futuristic romantic sci-fi book, although it did have some blatant discrepancies.

Finn is from the 21st century and is visiting the 23rd century, where Bree is from. Finn mentions Einstein, and Bree has a fit that he's going to give himself away as being from a different time because Einstein is so old. But later Bree mentions Spartans, who are from hundreds of years before Einstein, and she doesn't see that as a problem. Eventually, it was explained that Bree's mom loved the 20th century, so she often referenced it, but I just thought that was an easy way out of using references to our day. I kind of wish the author had made up references from the 23rd century to make the story seem more realistic.

As for the love interests in this book, Bree doesn't like either of the guys (Finn or Wyck) romantically at first. But then when she finds out they like her, she gets the tingles and the butterflies when they touch her arm or her leg or whatever. So she ultimately just started liking them because they liked her.
The love interest seemed realistic enough though. There was no insta-love, which is nice. The relationship built up throughout the novel, so it felt much more realistic than a book that starts out with the characters already in love. And the love interest was there for more than that: Finn actually played a role in the plot and the mystery of the book, and he was pivotal in the revelations at the end. I love when a character is in a book for a real purpose and isn't just an extraneous character.

I thought the author did a good job of portraying what the futuristic world could be like. There was a lot of technology and scientific stuff that is different from what we have nowadays. Occasionally I was a bit confused about a new device that wasn't explained well enough, but for the most part the descriptions made sense. I would have definitely appreciated a lot more world building though. Often times, a new idea or piece of technology was introduced as if the reader already knew what it was, so I had to deduce from context how it worked. It was nice that there weren't boring strings of explanations, but if the brief mention of how something worked was confusing, I had a hard time understanding its purpose.

I did like that Bree has new swear words in the future, like "Blarking," and my favourite, "Oh sweet plaid knickerbockers of Zeus!"

There were a few plot holes that I noticed (that I won't mention because of spoilers), but overall I liked the idea behind the story and intend on reading book two.