Review: Defective by B. Austin

**Also published on Goodreads**

I received a free copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.

This is between one and two stars for me, but I’m learning towards one.

First, I’ll mention the issues I had with plot. The idea of a futuristic society in which the creation of fully functioning real body parts for replacement is not far fetched. I can even work with the immortality. But this book doesn’t adequately address things like population growth (even limiting to one child per family doesn’t really work. There just isn’t enough space or resources for that if everyone is immortal). I also have an issue with the whole concept of Outcasts. Mostly because they seem to be a bunch of criminals. Apparently all they’re good at is stealing, breaking and entering, hotwiring cars. endangering others, destroying other people’s property, disrespecting teachers, and doing a lot of drinking and partying. Not to mention they’re jerks to each other and have a caste system based on money when they’re an underground society fighting… equality? Which, okay, isn’t really true. They’re fighting for individuality, but they don’t care who they stomp over to get it, because no one matters but themselves. It makes it almost impossible to care about what they’re doing or to hope they get away. For brevity, I’ll mention inconsistencies in the society, but not go into detail.

Next, the characters. So Dante was a jerk. Yes, he loves Kiara, but that’s about all he cares about and not in the romantic way. He’s just a jerk to everyone he meets whether he deserves it or not. He’s not sympathetic. In fact, I wanted to be in anyone’s head but his. What a jerk. The others were partially developed, but sort of inconsistent. Dice seemed more like the ldeader. Doc seemed out of place. And I didn’t see much point in caring about the others. And we never even meet Kiara! Never an in scne moment with her. Just a couple of flashbacks that don’t make her much more endearing than Dante. There wasn’t one I liked honestly.

The writing was bad. Too much info dump, not enough in scene and when we did get in scene moments they weren’t charged with emotion, but rather flat basic writing. It made me not care what was going on. I wasn’t invested in anyone and there were too many inconsistencies in plot and world building to hold my interest otherwise.

Spoilers below… sort of…

Finally, when he gets taken…. They strip him and findle him, poke him, and explore his body’s crevices and orifices. Meaning they rape him. And he barely complains. And there’s no.mention of it later. This casual dealing with it… It really bothered me. Like this just wasn’t a big deal, maybe because he’s a boy? Which makes it trivialized and sends the wrong message. It really bothered me.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. It’s a shame as I always hope for the best from new authors, but I can’t say that this was anything more than the poor execution of a decent premise.

E.C. Orr

Book Information:

Title: Defective (Outcast #1)
Author: B. Austin
AISN: B01FOPN3A4
Language: English
Approximate Length: 225 pages
Stars: ★☆☆☆☆
I received an ARC ebook copy from the author.