Title: Unbreakable
Author: Elizabeth Norris
Series: Unraveling, #2
Genres: Sci-Fi, Young Adult
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (Imprint of HarperCollins)
Date Published: April 23rd, 2013
Edition: Hardcover
Rating:
Four months after Ben disappeared through the portal to his home universe, Janelle believes she’ll never see him again. Her world is still devastated, but life is finally starting to resume some kind of normalcy. Until Interverse Agent Taylor Barclay shows up. Somebody from an alternate universe is running a human trafficking ring, kidnapping people and selling them on different Earths—and Ben is the prime suspect. Now his family has been imprisoned and will be executed if Ben doesn’t turn himself over within five days.
And when Janelle learns that someone she cares about—someone from her own world—has become one of the missing, she knows that she has to help Barclay, regardless of the danger. Now Janelle has five days to track down the real culprit. Five days to locate the missing people before they’re lost forever. Five days to reunite with the boy who stole her heart. But as the clues begin to add up, Janelle realizes that she’s in way over her head—and that she may not have known Ben as well as she thought. Can she uncover the truth before everyone she cares about is killed?
My Review:
After pretty much adoring Unraveling, I was really looking forward to the finale in the duet, Unbreakable. Unfortunately, I’m sad to say, that this was really just a huge disappointment for me.
There are a couple reasons that I think this book missed the mark (for me at least). The biggest reason is the characters. In Unraveling Janelle and Ben were vivid and their personalities jumped off the page. Their relationship was romantic and sweet and the interactions between them made the action along the way even more fun.
But in Unbreakable the characters just fell flat. It’s almost like they weren’t even the same characters at all. Janelle especially is such a far cry from the sarcastic and fun girl we got in Unraveling. I don’t know what happened, but she was just not the Janelle we met in the first book. Then there’s Ben who really kind of faded into the background in this book. Whereas I was really rooting for them in the first book, in this one I just wasn’t really seeing the spark between him and Janelle anymore. The chemistry between them was virtually gone, in fact I felt more chemistry between Janelle and Barclay than between her and Ben even though her and Barclay never even have a romantic relationship.
The other big problem with this book is the entire point of it. Or in other words, what in the world was the point of this book? With a duet series you would think that the two books kind of make sense together and that they are both needed to tell a story too large to fit in just one book. However, the storyline for this just kind of came out of left field. Other than the very miniscule portion of it that involved reuniting Ben and Janelle, the rest of it was just so random compared to the first book. So again, what was the point of this book? I hate to say it, but it felt like a fluff book to me. After reading this I really kind of just wish Unraveling had been a tad bit longer and just wrapped up differently as a standalone.
Aside from the negative I did enjoy the fast-pace, but without the characters I grew to love in the first place it just wasn’t as much fun. However, I did enjoy getting to know Barclay a bit more.
Would have appreciated if he wasn’t killed off after we finally got to know him though. 
Overall, not what I expected after the first book and not in a good way. Not sure where this story came from after the first book, but it just didn’t fit and the characters lost their luster in this one. Sad to say it, but it’s how I feel.
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