The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

“Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.”

Series: Chaos Walking, #1

Publication: May 5th 2008 by Walker.

Goodreads description:
Prentisstown isn't like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise. Just a month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd and his dog, Manchee -- whose thoughts Todd can hear too, whether he wants to or not -- stumble upon an area of complete silence. They find that in a town where privacy is impossible, something terrible has been hidden -- a secret so awful that Todd and Manchee must run for their lives.

But how do you escape when your pursuers can hear your every thought?

My thoughts:
The Knife of Never Letting Go was my first Patrick Ness book. I've heard so many great things about his book I was so excited to give one a go and while I liked The Knife of Never Letting Go I didn't love it like I was expecting to.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the writing style. The story is told in the first person present tense from Todd's point of view. There was lots of misspelling and grammar mistakes, I know they were there for a purpose, to show that Todd can't read but it annoyed me a lot. And took about half the book for me to get used to it.

Since I wasn't a fan of the writing style it was mainly the plot that kept me reading. The plot was very engaging. The story was fast paced. I had lots of questions, many of which weren't answered but I assume will be in the next book. There was lots of twists and turns which I liked. I was surprised at times. 

The main character Todd's character development was done at a perfect pace. I found Todd to be a bit annoying for the first half of the book but I grew to like and care for his character. He goes through a lot of growth in the book so I'm excited to see where he goes in the next two books.

My favourite part of the story was Todd and Viola's friendship. There relationship was very gradual; it was developed at a lovely pace. I really liked reading their interactions with each other.

The story takes place on another planet and while there was some world building I would have liken a bit more in regards to what happened to earth that caused us to move to this planet.

The ending was crazy, when I finished I immediately picked up the second book, The Ask and The Answer. So if you want to marathon a series I'd recommend giving the Chaos Walking trilogy a read!

My rating: 3.5 stars out of 5