Logic ended where love began.
the ones we’re meant to find, joan he
Author: Joan He
Publication Date: 4 May 2021
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Page Count: 384
Reading Method: Physical [OwlCrate backlog; buddy read]
Dates Read: July 24 – 25
Synopsis:
Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for three years without any recollection of how she arrived, or memories from her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, she has a sister named Kay, and it’s up to Cee to cross the ocean and find her.
In a world apart, 16-year-old STEM prodigy Kasey Mizuhara lives in an eco-city built for people who protected the planet―and now need protecting from it. With natural disasters on the rise due to climate change, eco-cities provide clean air, water, and shelter. Their residents, in exchange, must spend at least a third of their time in stasis pods, conducting business virtually whenever possible to reduce their environmental footprint. While Kasey, an introvert and loner, doesn’t mind the lifestyle, her sister Celia hated it. Popular and lovable, Celia much preferred the outside world. But no one could have predicted that Celia would take a boat out to sea, never to return.
Now it’s been three months since Celia’s disappearance, and Kasey has given up hope. Logic says that her sister must be dead. But nevertheless, she decides to retrace Celia’s last steps. Where they’ll lead her, she does not know. Her sister was full of secrets. But Kasey has a secret of her own.
Review:
Can we please take a moment to appreciate how absolutely stunning the OwlCrate cover of The Ones We’re Meant to Find is?? I’m obsessed! I wish I could say I loved the story as much as the cover, but alas, I did not.
If you can manage to push through the first half of the book, the plot is really great. It’s just getting to that point that was the killer. It was SUCH a slow start that I almost gave up. But everyone seemed to love it so much and I was doing it as a buddy read, so I felt I needed to give it a fair shot. I won’t lie, it was a massive struggle to get to the good parts of this book, but once you’re there, everything clicks into place and the story really takes off.
The Ones We’re Meant to Find follows two characters. Cee has been living on an island, all by herself, for three years. She can’t remember her past but she knows that her sister Kay is somewhere out there and she is determined to get off the island to find her. When a mysterious boy shows up, things start to change and she slowly begins to unravel the secrets of her past. Kasey is living in a floating island above the surface of the earth. She is recovering from the disappearance of her sister Celia, who she is convinced is dead. As she works to sort the details of Celia’s disappearance, she comes across Act. In the course of exploring Celia’s past, Kasey and Act must work together to aid in saving the world from itself.
There is so much complexity to this story and the characters involved. I struggled heavily in the beginning with understanding the terminology and the lack of world building. As someone who doesn’t have much experience with the sci-fi genre, I don’t know if the author just assumed we would understand everything out the gate, or if it was just a little poorly done. It was frustrating because I wanted to understand and I wanted to get lost in the book, but I couldn’t do that without having to stop every so often to figure out what the heck was going on.
About halfway through everything falls into place and the reading becomes much easier. There are a few shocking twists that I wasn’t expecting at all! I loved the discussion of the climate crisis, though I could see how it might be difficult to handle with the way the world is. But this story gives you something to sit with and think about.
Overall, The Ones We’re Meant to Find was a thought-provoking, if not a little slow, read. I enjoyed elements of it immensely, but I just struggled so much in the beginning.
