The Towering Sky by Katharine McGee

SYNOPSIS

When you have everything, you have everything to lose.

Welcome back to New York, 2119. A skyscraper city, fueled by impossible dreams.

Leda just wants to move on from what happened in Dubai. Until a new investigation forces her to seek help—from the person she’s spent all year trying to forget.

Rylin is back in her old life, reunited with an old flame. But when she starts seeing Cord again, she finds herself torn: between two worlds, and two very different boys.

Calliope feels trapped, playing a long con that costs more than she bargained for. What happens when all her lies catch up with her?
​
Watt is still desperately in love with Leda. He’ll do anything to win her back—even dig up secrets that are better left buried.

And now that Avery is home from England—with a new boyfriend, Max—her life seems more picture-perfect than ever. So why does she feel like she would rather be anything but perfect?
​
Perfect for fans of Kiera Cass and Anna Godbersen, and with all the drama, romance and hidden secrets from The Thousandth Floor and The Dazzling Heights, this explosive finale will not disappoint.

Synopsis from Amazon

---

PERSONAL REVIEW

While the covers are stunning, I've been pretty ambivalent about this series; the characters show potential and the world is incredibly interesting, but the plot for each character are often boring and uninspired. Still, I wanted to finish this book so I could say good-bye to this series with a light heart (plus, I really cannot leave a series unfinished -- it would just drive me crazy). I ended up being pretty happy with how The Towering Sky finished each character's story and ended the trilogy.

Still Like the POVs
While I don't necessarily like all of the characters (although this book definitely had the best ones), I do like hat McGee has continued to include so many point of views in her novels. Watt and Leda have been a favourite throughout, and I really liked Calliope in this book. Rylin and Avery weren’t as strong, but it was nice to still end the series with them. And we get a chapter from Atlas! Although I still really don’t get why everyone loves him, it was smart to give readers a chapter from his POV and a nice way to wrap up the series. As a side note, I should add that this is the first book where I didn’t find Avery to be a waste of time to read. She’s more interesting this time and her story definitely ends with the most intrigue and potential.

Very Repetitive Summaries of Previous Books
Every chapter seemed to begin with a character summarizing what happened to them in a previous novel, which was incredibly repetitive for those who have actually read the books. How many times do we need these characters to rehash the previous year? It honestly made the two previous novels pointless, because it’s clear that they could be neatly explained within a few sentences. The constant reference to Thousandth Floor and Dazzling Heights forced this book to constantly stop and give us reminders of why characters where doing what they were doing; it often ruined the flow of the story and drew attention away from the present.

Avery and Atlas Seem Like An Attention Grab
This relationship just didn’t do anything for me; it felt like just a background story the entire time, even when it was all Avery could talk and think about. It’s not like I was disgusted by it, or I hoped they ended up together, I just didn’t really care. Every time Atlas and Avery were together, or their relationship was talked about, all I kept thinking was that this was simply a way for McGee to shock readers or to convince them that this was an epic love story. I never bought it. Atlas always seemed really boring to me, so maybe that was part of my disinterest? Regardless, if loving each other makes them happy, then more power to them. I just don’t really care either way.

Very Neat Ending for All
This series tried very hard to create dramatic and climactic moments for the characters, but I always just felt like we were in high school, even though it takes place in a city that’s now a thousand floor building. I was always more interested in the concept of what this building looked like and just kept wishing that we were given even more information about it and how it operates. Even in Dubai, we never really got much information about what this future world was like. Regardless, I was content with how the series wrapped up for these characters. McGee did a nice job of making sure that every loose end was neatly tied up, while leaving us with a bit of an open ending for our imaginations to think about what might happen next. Everyone finds some kind of happy ending, which tends to make me happy.

The story line for each of these books have not been too exciting, and I often felt like I was simply in a future high school listening to teens whine about their lives, but the future tech and characters like Calliope and Watt somewhat saves the day for me. This isn't a series I would read again, but I'm still interested in reading more from McGee in the future. She has some great ideas and I look forward to what she gives us next.

---

FINAL RATING: 3.5/5