The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, #3) by Neal Shusterman

My rating: four stars

Genre: YA, dystopian

Edition: audiobook

Goodreads Summary: It’s been three years since Rowan and Citra disappeared; since Scythe Goddard came into power; since the Thunderhead closed itself off to everyone but Grayson Tolliver.

In this pulse-pounding conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy, constitutions are tested and old friends are brought back from the dead.

The Arc of a Scythe series is absolutely one of my favorite series, and so when The Toll came out, I couldn’t wait to listen to it! I chose to listen to it because I listened to the first two books and I loved it – the narrator was fantastic.

Likes: Like the first two books, the world in this story is so insane. It provokes so much thought about death and how the lack of it would affect our society. The ways in which the government is changed in the story to fit around this lack of natural death is wonderful to read about. How people’s actions change is extremely interesting too – for example, people literally “splat” (jump off buildings) for fun for the adrenaline rush. As for this book specifically, I like that we got to learn more about other people besides Rowan and Citra. There are several POVs in this book that weren’t as prevalent in the first two books and I really liked learning about these other characters and their place in the world. The pacing was also great. It seemed like there was always something crazy or interesting going on somewhere. If not much was going on in one POV, there would be another where a plethora of events would be unfolding.

Dislikes: The ending to the second book was absolutely insane and I had no clue where this book was going to go. I LOVED that about Thunderhead. However, I personally did not care for where this book went in the end. It was just so out there and got away from what I believe this book series is about. I think that the ending made sense, but there could have been better places this story could have gone.

Overall, I will say that this wasn’t my favorite book of the series. I still love the writing, the characters, the pacing, and so much more, this book just went in a direction that I personally didn’t care for. I honestly debated my rating for a long time. I wanted to give it five stars because I love the series so much, but I finally decided that if I was having to debate it for so long, that it wasn’t worth five stars. So, I gave it four stars because of the direction that it went and because I didn’t love it as much as the first two, however, I would still recommend this book and this series to everyone. It is phenomenal!