Maybe I'm finally outgrowing the YA genre. I'm 27 years old and when I walk into any bookstore, that's the section I'm first drawn to. I see books that incite my interest and I'm dying to read them. Maybe I'm outgrowing the cliches found in every single YA dystopian novel. I haven't read this book though and I'm basing it purely off of the film adaptation. If the book is anything like the film adaptation though.... maybe I truly have outgrown the genre. In The Darkest Minds a disease kills off half of the US children's population. Those children who have not been killed off now have some sort of super skill or power. The government fears them and all the children are rounded up and sent to camps.
Ruby Daly (Amandla Stenberg) is our heroine in this film and is rounded up after she accidentally wipes her parents' memory of her. Ruby is an "orange" which means she has mind control powers. Children in the orange and red categories are killed immediately so Ruby mind controls a doctor in categorizing her as a "green". Greens are the least dangerous as they only have heightened intelligence. Six years later, Ruby is discovered as being an orange and is smuggled out of the camp by an undercover doctor (Mandy Moore). This doctor is part of an organization called the Children's League and their mission is to uncover the truth of the camps while growing an army using all the children they rescue. Ruby immediately becomes suspicious and runs off joining a group of kids on their way to a safe haven.
The adaptation is not interesting. The kids do one thing and then they do another and then they do another and so on and so forth. The four main actors play off of each other well, but their characters are woefully one-dimensional. Ruby and Liam (Harris Dickinson) have a romance going on, but at some points it feels incredibly forced. This has nothing to do with the actors themselves, it is simply poorly written. This is also an instance of where the plot twist isn't much of a twist as you can see it coming a mile away.
The film ends with the idea that there will be a sequel involved. I think a sequel could be interesting especially if there is a war as hinted in the ending of this one. No matter what I hope it would be higher stakes than this one. Even when they fight the antagonist in this film he was defeated way too easily.
