The Trap by Andrew Fukuda

Genre:  YA Dystopian Vampire

The Hunt, Book 3

Andrew Fukuda's website

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Note:  Read the earlier books in this series before reading my review.  It spoils earlier plots, and you can spoil the plot of the third one if you follow the clues spread throughout the first and second really carefully...

Description (taken from Andrew Fukuda's website):

After barely escaping the Mission alive, Gene and Sissy face an impossible task: staying alive long enough to stop an entire world bent on their destruction. Bound on a train heading into the unknown with the surviving Mission girls, Gene, Sissy, David, and Epap must stick together and use everything they have to protect each other and their only hope: the cure that will turn the blood-thirsty creatures around them into humans again. Now that they know how to reverse the virus, Gene and Sissy have one final chance to save those they love and create a better life for themselves. But as they struggle to get there, Gene's mission sets him on a crash course with Ashley June, his first love . . . and his deadliest enemy.

This is going to be one of those books that is highly difficult to review without spoiling anything.  While nothing had been spoiled for me per-say, all it took was a couple of people talking about how mind-blowing this book was and me picking up on some clues that helped me figure it out before starting this.  And while I have to say this one was clever, I was kind of bored with it...

From the end of the second, we know that Gene and Sissy are in a dire situation.  They escaped the horde of vampires at the Mission only to be stuck on a train heading to the ruler's Palace.  This book kind of takes an impossible situation and makes it even more impossible (kind of like zombie books).  Anyways, once in the Palace, the ruler offers them a choice: kill Ashley June and walk away from all of this or die.  Ashley June has made a mess of things while trying to reach her end goal: turn Gene and live happily ever after with him.  Not the typical love triangle, is it?

I don't know what it was with this book, but I had the hardest time getting into it.  It took me a couple of days to get past a hundred pages, but then I pretty much finished it from there.  It could be the utterly hopeless plotlines or the fact that I had this book figured out right from the start and was disappointed to not be surprised with the ending.  I don't know.  I was annoyed I guess.  If you want to hear my big rant, here goes (spoiler alert, read at own risk):  all of the side characters die, they die, nothing, finished, dead, gah.  Okay, rant done.

This series is an interesting series to pick up.  The author is very clever in his writing and twisting the story from beginning to end.  And I think I probably would have been more amazed with the last book if I hadn't figured it out beforehand.  But now I just feel like I have a nasty aftertaste and need to start reading something else stat.