4.5 Stars

I received this book from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review.

This Cruel Design is the much anticipated sequel to bestselling YA dystopian This Mortal Coil which followed teenager Catarina as she tried to survive in a world where humans' bodies are ran by special, encoded tech but a virus with no cure is ravaging the world and causing people to form zombie-like habits before exploding, literally. Catarina's father is a world-renowned scientist who may be humanity's last hope but three years ago he was kidnapped by a corrupt organisation and Catarina has been on her own. Until a man calls Cole shows up claiming to be sent by her dad.

This Cruel Design follows on pretty much days after This Mortal Coil ends when Catarina, and the readers, found out something huge and the virus was continuing to evolve and get deadlier, despite desperate cure measures. I was honestly hooked into this book from the moment I started and though it took a while to get back in touch with the story and remember who everyone was, and what they were doing (I kept mixing up Dax and Cole for some reason), it didn't stop me from reading it furiously and wanting to find out what happened.

I really loved the direction this novel took - both with the world building, the new characters introduced and the slight steer away from the YA romance that was a bit too heavy in the first book. I loved that we ended up in Entropia, and saw a different style of living with more gene-hacking and tech use than where we had previously been with Catarina and Cole.I feel like the world building was better here, and though I would have liked a bit more of it, and time in Entropia, I'm confident we will see even more in the third novel.

Mato as a character was a fantastic addition for the get go, especially with the element of him being completely grey and I had no idea if I wanted to trust him or not. I also feel like I can add in Jun Bei as a new character here as well, as though we only got snippets of her in This Mortal Coil, I feel like we really began to understand her in This Cruel Design. There were definitely both human parts of her revealed to Cat, and the more dangerous side.

I wish I was a bit more tech-savvy to be able to break down how great the descriptions are of the type of tech, coding, and gene hacking used in this trilogy but unfortunately I'm not. All I can say is even for a tech dummy like me, I was able to understand what Cat and the others were doing with their tech and appreciate the gloriousness of it, and imagine a possible future where someday humans might actually have access to this kind of technology.

The end of this book, the last line (!!), was a riot and I honestly cannot wait for the next one and see what happens.