The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee

The amount of times I have suggested this book to someone, you’d think I would be able to say the title without getting tongue tied! However, that’s not yet the case, but that’s okay, because you get to read it, instead of having to hear me attempt to say it!

This book is like Gossip Girl, but on steroids. It’s set in the future, where an entire city - New York to be precise - has been transformed into a single tower; a tower with 1000 floors. The higher up the tower you live, the higher your social standing and, most likely, your wealth.

In the tradition of Gossip Girl, we get different perspectives of various teens who live in the tower - male, female, gay, straight, rich, poor, white, people of colour. The diversity is nice, because it’s unthinkable that there would be only straight, white, rich people in a city.

We open the book with a girl falling from the top of the tower. When I read the intro the first time, I was a little sceptical as to what the point in reading the book was, given that we know how it ends. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that I almost forgot about said girl - except when someone was on the roof - because I was so sucked into the various stories of the teens.

World building was good - humans, sci-fi not fantasy - set in a world that is clearly ours but set in the future. Technology sounds both fascinating and I want it, while simultaneously sounding somewhat horrifying, especially the quantum computer (Nadia) one of the characters has installed IN THEIR OWN HEAD!

The author does a wonderful job of weaving together the storylines. Some of them are obvious - schoolmates, siblings etc - while others are a little different - the girl from down tower who was a cleaner for someone further up tower. They all come together by the end of the book, and while I was excited to hear that there was a sequel, I wasn’t unhappy with the ending, had it been a stand alone book.

If you like Gossip Girl; if you like Pretty Little Liars; if you like Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies - give this one a shot.

Content warnings: discussions of mental health, discussions of (kind of) incest, death by falling, drug use, kissing, same-sex relationships.

Overall Rating: solid 4.5 - I had a friend with dyslexia who said this was the first book they had ever read and enjoyed - so much that they got it out more than once!

Posted by Li

Catalogue link: The Thousandth Floor