The Thousandth Floor

This was hilariously stupid. But the part of me that would binge Gossip Girl a decade ago had to keep going. Because this is 100% Gossip Girl 2118. High schoolers doing whatever they want with drugs, alcohol, and each other in a twisted bubble of classism.

Avery = Blair
Atlas = Chuck
Leda = Serena
Cord = Nate
Rylin = Vanessa
Watt (+ Nadia) = Dan (+ Gossip Girl)
Eris = just an heiress

And yes, while there’s pseudo-incest that caught me off guard super early on… the likes of Game of Thrones has reset the threshold of tolerance. Unfortunately.

What was most jarring to me, as a Floridian, was that a club was named Pulse. This book came out 2 months after the Pulse shooting in Orlando. I winced a little every time it was mentioned.

Bring on Book 2!

This book was basically like Gossip Girl but on fire and in the future. I loved it. It basically blew my mind and I CANNOT wait for the next book. Oh my god. That ending though. Ugh. This book was not only written beautifully, but the amount of futuristic little details that were added in just blew me away. It was breathtaking. It was inspiring.

I generally don't take much stock in blurb comparisons, but for once I was not lied to, The Thousandth Floor really is Gossip Girl meets Pretty Little Liars if they took place in the distant future (the year 2118 to be more precise) and featured way more diversity.

The Manhattan we know and some of us love is gone, instead replaced by a single building a thousand stories tall and miles wide. The underprivileged live on the lower floors (the lower you are the poorer), while the rich and powerful reside on the upper levels, making the phrase upper eschelon way more literal.

The story opens two months before the start of the narrative, with an unnamed female character falling to her death after a party on the top floor goes horribly wrong. show more Was she pushed? Did she jump? Was it a freak accident? It's a mystery -- a murder mystery that is!

Much like the aforementioned books this brand new series has drawn comparisons to, each chapter of The Thousandth Floor is devoted to a different point of view, and as per usual, some character POVs are stronger than others.

So while I loved chapters narrated by the rich girl squad made up of Avery (the perfect genetically altered girl with a deep dark secret who lives on the thousandth floor), Eris (the bi-sexual player whose whole life is turned upside) and Leda (the recovering alcoholic who is not all there), I was not really interested in how the other-other half lived. Even more so because their lives are so connected to the other characters anyway.

Sorry Rylin and Watt, your love of recreational drugs and tech genius savvy were not my preferred narratives. On the plus side, I did appreciate how interwoven things got as the book progressed, and even the less than stellar chapters weren't Bran chapters.

Characters aside, The Thousandth Floor is full of everything I want from my frothy teen novels: romance, drama, backstabbing, sexy times, gossip, secrets, affairs and even a murder mystery, but what truly sets it apart are its futuristic elements.

From moving tattoos to makeup and hair machines that do all the work for you, hologram shopping that projects clothing onto your body, a three hour trip to Paris underneath the earth, contact lenses that you can text with and virtual reality video games, McGee's story is chock full of fantastical technologies you can only dream of.

The only downside? I wanted to learn a little more about the world outside of the Tower. The skyscraper takes up dozens of New York city blocks and the majority of the upper class seems loathe to leave this technological hub -- because it does have pretty much anything you could ever want, including pieces of reclaimed Central Park -- but how does the world outside view the Tower? What does it look like from New Jersey? Does it block out the sun? Was Donald Trump elected president? Does the entire world finally accept global warming as fact? Did we colonize Mars yet? Maybe I'll get more of that in book two.

Regardless of if we get more visits outside the Tower, I cannot wait to see what new machinations book two brings.

THE GOOD
-Takes all the fun of frothy teen dramas but sets it in the future
-The murder mystery had me guessing until the very end
-Really enjoyed the glimpses into the science fiction world of the rich and famous
-The drama! The backstabbing! The book two set up!

THE BAD
-Not all of the POVs were my cup of tea -- go away Rylin and Watt show less

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#1 The Thousandth Floor - ★★★★
#2 The Dazzling Heights - Not Read Yet
#3 The Towering Sky - Not Read Yet

In the year 2118, in New York City there’s a thousand-story tower. It has everything you could imagine inside, and there is no need for you to ever get out.

The floor you live on represents your status. The higher you live, the more money you have, which means you become more popular. The rich people don’t necessarily hang around with the poor, and gossips spread faster than lightning. The thousandth floor is the top!

But then one night, at a party, one girl falls down from the rooftop of the tower, and the mystery remains – what exactly happened that night?

Despite all the show more mixed reviews I’ve seen for this book, I actually really enjoyed it! The world is futuristic and I loved reading about all the different cool items and gadgets that the author was writing about.

The main character that we have is Avery Fuller, who lives on the thousandth floor of the tower. She has been genetically designed to only have the best genes from her parents, and is, therefore, perfect. But then – SPOILER ALERT – she is in love with her brother, who is actually adopted, so not her brother. And as weird as it might seem, they are not related in any way, and the romance was beautifully written. And a lot of you people have been giving this book a bad review because of this reason, but some of you also happen to love ”City of Bones” by Cassandra Clare, who features Clary and Jace, who started with the same background?

Apart from Avery, there were many other characters as well, all of them different and all of them unique at the same time. A girl that works as a main in a rich boy’s house, a girl who is best friends with Avery but doesn’t feel she belongs there, a girl that suddenly finds out she is not rich anymore and has to move onto the lower floors of the tower, a hacker who wants to earn money, no matter the what… The book is written from all these character’s points of view, and I loved the variety and also how all these characters connect to each other in an interesting way. They all have goals, dreams, hopes, fears, and everything is surrounded in drama.

If you love Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars or the TV Show Riverdale, I guarantee you will enjoy this one. It’s full of mystery, drama, romance, sci-fi and luxury.

Thank you to my sister, for letting me read this book. I borrowed it from her and will unfortunately have to give it back soon…

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The only thing this book really succeeded in was reaffirming why I hate snobby people and their ceaseless contrivances. If you like Gossip Girl, reality TV, and don't mind fake-politeness, then you'll probably really like this. I, however, really didn't.

This is a science fiction romantic mess about the most convoluted love dodecahedron you've ever heard of. Here's a brief overview:

Person A is in love with person B, who is flirting with person C. Person A and C are best friends. Person D is friends with person A and C, and was in a relationship with person E. Person E is also in a relationship with person F, who's dating person G. Person H is in love with person A, and was hired by person C to spy on person B. Persons A, C, D, F, and H show more are all main characters.

And that's not even the end of it. It goes on and on and on and on and I hated it.

Oh, and there's pseudo-incest, if you're into that kinda thing. It's honestly not very interesting and doesn't really make any sense, but hey, McGee needed maximum drama, and what's more dramatic than two adopted siblings pining after each other?

Honestly, I only liked one character and she freaking dies at the end, so I'm definitely not going to finish this series. show less

The only thing this book really succeeded in was reaffirming why I hate snobby people and their ceaseless contrivances. If you like Gossip Girl, reality TV, and don't mind fake-politeness, then you'll probably really like this. I, however, really didn't.

This is a science fiction romantic mess about the most convoluted love dodecahedron you've ever heard of. Here's a brief overview:

Person A is in love with person B, who is flirting with person C. Person A and C are best friends. Person D is friends with person A and C, and was in a relationship with person E. Person E is also in a relationship with person F, who's dating person G. Person H is in love with person A, and was hired by person C to spy on person B. Persons A, C, D, F, and H show more are all main characters.

And that's not even the end of it. It goes on and on and on and on and I hated it.

Oh, and there's pseudo-incest, if you're into that kinda thing. It's honestly not very interesting and doesn't really make any sense, but hey, McGee needed maximum drama, and what's more dramatic than two adopted siblings pining after each other?

Honestly, I only liked one character and she freaking dies at the end, so I'm definitely not going to finish this series. show less

I think this was a fun read. It wasn't anything life changing or really anything that impressive but it was a fun read. This book is told from five characters points of view. They are all teenagers that live in a 1000 story tall skyscraper in New York City. The higher you are in the building the higher your social class. I thought going into this book that I would find the stories of the lower story kids more interesting but I found most of the characters boring. The only one I really enjoyed reading about was Eris. I also really like that they made her have a girl friend for most of the book but then the ending made me really really mad. in this book you read in the prologue that someone gets thrown of the building and of course it show more has to be the only LGBT character who has finally found love and happiness. I really felt like this book was just about drama when I had been promised and interesting story set in the future with an interesting social dynamics. There is also a romantic and sexual relationship between one of the characters and her adopted brother. I do not care if the sibling is adopted. If you are siblings and share a last name having a relationship is incest and it made me very uncomfortable reading about it. Also it seems like every character in this book has a drug addiction but it felt like that part of the society in this book wasn't well explained. Overall I will probably read the next book as long as Eris' girlfriend has a POV in it because I want to see what she does next but I was a bit underwhelmed and let down by a book I was really looking forward to. show less