Book Review of Paradigm by Ceri A. Lowe Review

Goodreads Summary: What if the end of the world was just the beginning?
Alice Davenport awakens from a fever to find her mother gone and the city she lives in ravaged by storms – with few survivors.
When Alice is finally rescued, she is taken to a huge underground bunker owned by the mysterious Paradigm Industries. As the storms worsen, the hatches close.
87 years later, amidst the ruins of London, the survivors of the Storms have reinvented society. The Model maintains a perfect balance – with inhabitants routinely frozen until they are needed by the Industry.
Fifteen-year-old Carter Warren knows his time has come. Awoken from the catacombs as a contender for the role of Controller General, it is his destiny to succeed – where his parents failed.
But Carter soon discovers that the world has changed, in ways that make him begin to question everything that he believes in. As Carter is forced to fight for those he loves and even for his life, it seems that the key to the future lies in the secrets of the past...
Goodreads Rating: 4.05 with 37 ratings.
Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Young Adult, Apocalyptic, Post-Apocalyptic
Get the Book: Amazon,  Book Depository

Review:

Edited 11/24/2016

Before I get started here's a disclaimer. I received this book in exchange for a review from Netgalley.

Paradigm by Ceri A. Lowe is a different take on the dystopian stories than what I've previously read. It starts out with Carter Warren being told he has five minutes left. Carter gets frozen at around 15 or 16 years old so that he can come back in the future and make a contribution to society. The society is the new community that formed after a five-year storm pelted the modern world. They've taken out all of the fun things that make us human and stripped the world down to necessities. There's no money, people work to keep the community going, everyone dresses the same, food is synthetic, pretty basic dystopian stuff.
When Carter wakes up, it's 15ish years later, and he's a contender to be Controller of this community. As soon as he's back, he finds out that he has twins, a boy and a girl that stemmed from one drug-induced night at a party. The twins are the first in the community, so it's a huge event. In alternating chapters, we get introduced to Alice, who is a survivor of the storms and an original scout for the community. At first, the switching back and forth bugged me, but after a while, you start to see how the two are connected. Alice is there for the creation of the society, and Carter may very well be there for its demise.
I thought the story was interesting enough, but I thought some of the plot twists were fairly predictable especially towards the end. During the end we find out about Carter's great-grandfather (or, at least, I think that was his relation to him) and how he survived after the storms in Alice's house, and how it points to there being another civilization (hello, book #2). I also found the whole Deadlands encounter with Lily to be incredibly obvious.
Some of the wording seemed very off to me, especially in the scenes with Alice. The dialect in her portion of the story struck me as forced. Honestly, if I saw the phrase "Now you see it, and now you don't" one more time I was going to stop reading. Alice also seemed robotic to me. She just didn't resonate with me and seemed emotionless. Carter did to some extent, but I was a little more forgiving of that since he was the one who was brought up by the community.
Some of the formattings were off (unnecessary spacing, and inconsistency in spacing paragraphs). There were some misspelled words, and at times, it seemed like words that should be there weren't. It also looked like at times that necessary paragraphs were taken out altogether. I often found myself reading, and then having to reread because it felt like I missed something, especially the closer to the end it got. I think at one point in time there was a character mentioned randomly that I don't remember being in the rest of the book.
Despite the issues I had with the book, I found it to be interesting. The interest level did start to fade for me towards the middle-to-end of the book but picked up again in the last two chapters. When the next one comes out, I'll probably give it a chance.
Feel free to leave me any comments on the book or the review.

Three out of Five Moons