Review: Defiance (Defiance #1) by C.J Redwine

Defiance (Defiance #1) by C.J Redwine
Publisher:  Balzar & Bray
Publication date: September 1st, 2012
Number of pages: 403 pgs
Format: Paperback
Purchase: Amazon | The Book Depository | Book World Australia

Rachel’s world is confined to the protective walls around her city. Beyond them are violent wanderers, extreme terrain, and a danger straight out of legend: a beast called the Cursed One that devastates everything in its path.

When Rachel’s father goes missing, she is desperate to search for him. But her attempts to flee the city bring her to the attention of its overbearing ruler. His efforts to control her make the world within the walls seem as dangerous as that outside.

Her only chance at escape is Logan. Once her father’s apprentice, and now her only protector, he feels that helping her might mean losing her completely. But if he can put his feelings aside, they might be able to save more than Rachel’s father. They might be able to break down the walls, and set their people free.

Defiance is the debut novel for break-out C.J Redwine. She successfully carves a delicious and enticing story about one girl's hopes to find her last living family. A story based on hope, despair, faith and love.
This is a book which surely you would put on your to-read list, right? *waits for nods all around.*

Rachel lives in Baalboden, one of the few places deemed livable, where everything else was cut off and called The Wasteland, where there is nothing but a monster lurking abouts devouring everything out there. Baalboden is a civilised community where Rachel's father works as a courier, not to mention being the best tracker out there, but when one day he does not return from a trip, Rachel starts to get worried.
The longer he is gone, the less people think he would have survived. Rachel is adamanent. She fully believes he still lives, even if the city now has deemed him legally dead, and her protectorship has been transferred from her father, to... the boy she wished she never could see again.

Meet Logan. The boy of Rachel's dreams and nightmares. The two share a complicated history that she doesn't want to think about for fear it will dread up all the embarassing thoughts from that time of her life, but when Logan suddenly becomes her protector aka guardian, she is forced to spend more time with him than she would have liked.
But that doesn't stop her from wanting to escape his clutches and go search for her father, but unbeknowest to Rachel, Logan also is planning on searching for him as well... when the time is right.

Rachel is really a strong and kickass character.  She is seventeen years of age, a few months from being deemed an adult and no longer need a protector if she so wishes, but until then she doesn't have much of a choice.
The fact she does not give up hope on finding her father and fully believes he is still alive out there, even though everyone else has written him off as being destroyed and killed out in the wastelands, she does not give up on hoping. I admired that about her. 
Logan is also an amazing strong character. He comes from a background he isn't proud of. He has had a hard life since his mother was taken away from him as a child, and had to live on the streets until Jared, Rachel's father took him in and gave him a job. I can imagine he felt like he was giving a second chance at life and didn't want to ruin that by doing anything that would put that in jeopardy. 

This story is written in both Rachel and Logan's POVs. It's interesting to see things from both of their perspective, as they deal with the same, and different things at the same time. You can understand where they are both coming from. They are alike and yet so different. They hope. They love and they fear, and not all in that order.

The relationship between these two was probably one of my favourite things about this book, if not the favourite thing. It was so real and honest. So hard and yet so heartbreaking. The love story these two have going on didn't just start. But it's from this point forward when it starts to progress into something that is worth fighting for.

If you are interested in a story about love, mystery, loyalty, family with kickass characters in a heartbreakingly dystopian world, then this is for you.

I look forward to August when the sequel comes out. I can't wait to see where Rachel and Logan's story goes to next.

Rating: 4.5 / 5