Review: The Girl Who Was Too Much And Not Enough: Book 1 of 3, Kiera Rieman Series

The Girl Who Was Too Much And Not Enough: Book 1 of 3, Kiera Rieman Series by Lelina Durrette
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

And yet, part of me still wondered what was really so fundamentally wrong about just being myself. 

Set in the year 2125, The Girl Who Was Too Much and Not Enough takes a look at a society that has given full governmental control to what and how much food people can consume, along with other personal choices. Told all through seventeen year old Kiera's eyes, she's one of the “not-quite-perfects”, which is what her friend group calls themselves because they're deemed unattractive for not meeting the society's rigid standards. It's rough for Kiera because in this society, how good you look equals power and most teens, before adulthood, enter The Center and do the Sleep-a-Weigh program. This program is basically where they are put in a comatose state to lose weight and get plastic surgery to look “perfect”. Losing some from her friend group to this program, Kiera feels even more lonely, especially when her mother and younger sister constantly berate her and only her father seems to love her for her, until she has a chance encounter with an eighteen year old boy.

I had never really fit in my world. It was like I had been waiting my whole life to make this change. 

When Kiera meets Asa, her whole world changes. He introduces her to the Underground, a market and makeshift city where people who don't want to follow the restrictive rules of the government live. There she tries real fresh fruit, meat, and see that people can be, what is deemed overweight, and with their “imperfections” like crooked teeth, happy and be loved. The beginning of the story was a little shaky with it's constant talk and comparisons of GMO and non-GMO food, to the point I was thinking this was going to be fully an indoctrinate book but that eventually, for the most part, faded away and the plot of teens and outcasts fighting the evil government started to progress (I fully realize this is a different kind of propaganda but was less forced in face and more flowed written message in). 

I really wanted to believe that Asa and I had our whole future stretching before us, but why did it feel like this was only the beginning of our struggles? 

This was in the vein of a Hunger Games or Maze Runner, with Kiera joining Asa and his friends and family as they first buck the system with the Underground Black Market, the government capturing some of them and sending them to The Center for “rehabilitation”, rescue mission, and eventual plan for the future. There's a romance between Kiera and Asa (it was definitely rushed with how quickly he trusts her) with kissing and a faint love triangle that tries to appear with a classmate of Kiera's named Ian, along with some action and light battle scenes with the rescue mission and them being on the run. 

I drew a shaky breath and turned back to Asa. He smiled and held out his hand to me. I took it and we set off together into the unknown. 

The ending had a slight cliffhanger with the cast of characters having to leave their district for another one to try and avoid all the heat from being found out in theirs. There's an obvious villain, Captain Kulig who tortured people in The Center, in the wings, a maybe maybe not traitor Ian going along with them, the question of what happened to Kiera's family, and of course the continuing romance between Kiera and Asa. The second half with all it's action felt a little disjointed with the slower, introducing beginning but if you like dystopian young adult, this could be another series to add to your reading.

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