Though it won't stand alone easily, McGee's sequel to The Thousandth Floor (2016) adds new intrigue, mystery, and characters to a well-imagined and even plausible future Manhattan, 2118. Eris is gone, victim of an unintentional push from the thousandth floor, and her friends are struggling to either find out or hide the circumstances of her death. Lower-floor Rylin receives a scholarship to the elite Berkeley School, where she must face her former lover, as well as deal with class prejudice. Avery struggles with her forbidden romance with adopted brother Atlas; and there's a new girl in town, the fascinating con artist Calliope, who longs for stability and real friends. Precise details of future technology (implanted computers, contact lenses allowing the wearer to gather all sorts of information, holograms, and much more), exotic locales such as Dubai, glamorous parties, and the consistently entertaining cattiness among the characters combine for a swift, entertaining read. With plentiful chapter hooks and lots of action, this is a great choice for a beach read.

Readers return to the luxurious skyscraper in 2118 Manhattan. Leda (The Thousandth Floor) threatens and blackmails her friends into covering up Eris's murder, but not everyone believes her. A new face and new romantic entanglements threaten everyone's secrets. Despite inconsistent characters that vacillate between emotions convenient to the plot, drama fans will eat up the juicy intrigue, sexy romance--and a new murder.

Guilty parties continue to party in this soap-opera sequel.Surrounded by extravagance and futuristic technology, the elite teens of the top floors of the 1,000-story Tower in New York City still manage to be miserable. Vicious and ambitious Leda Cole struggles to conceal her murder of Eris Dodd-Radson by blackmailing her witnesses over their darkest secrets. There's Avery Fuller and her semi-incestuous relationship with her adopted brother, Atlas; hacker Watzahn "Watt" Bakradi and his illegal quantum computer; and scholarship-student Rylin Myers and her criminal ex-boyfriend. Newcomer con artist Calliope Brown and her mother also seek to exploit the richer residents. The economically stratified Tower also seems racially segregated; black Leda fights to overcome her middle-class origins, and lower-floor (and therefore lower-class) Iranian-American Watt and "half-Asian" Rylin falter as foils for the mostly white 1 percent. While the multiplicity of narrators causes tiresome plot repetition, it mimics the self-absorbed world of the Tower's top tier. McGee offers intriguing sci-fi elements—communication-enabling contact lenses, hovercraft, holography—but sacrifices social commentary or dystopian revolution for traditional teenage melodrama. In over 400 pages of dizzying excess and desperate partying, no one cuts through the "Gordian knot of these highliers' screwed-up lives." Readers wanting more substance should seek out J.G. Ballard's High-Rise. Only for avid CW viewers and tabloid-news fans, a shallow yet overlong tale of rich people and their problems. (Dystopian romance. 14-18)

“It would be several hours before the girl’s body was found.” As with her prequel, The Thousandth Floor (HarperCollins, 2016/VOYA August 2016), McGee begins at the end, and readers find out who the girl is and what happened to her as they read the story. She grabs the reader’s attention and never lets go. Eris’s death in Book 1 has left the rest of the Tower Dwellers in somewhat of a tailspin. Leda is blackmailing all who were on the roof so they do not tell the truth. Avery is trying to start a relationship with Atlas. Rylin receives a scholarship to take Eris’s place at school basically, but she has to see Cord and Leda all the time. Watt is forced by Leda to monitor all the people that were on the roof that night to make sure that no one tells. Muriel is out for revenge against those who killed Eris and covered up the death. A new cog is thrown into the machine when a girl named Calliope comes to the tower to shake things up. As time passes, Rylin fits in well at school and even gets a Hollywood internship. Cord stops hating her. Atlas and Avery almost get caught in Vermont by some friends. Leda and Watt start to get along and maybe even like each other, even though Watt plans to get just close enough to her to get her to confess so that he would have her secret on tape. Avery and Atlas are surprised by news that Atlas will head up the new towers in Dubai. They think their dad knows about them. Leda still believes that Eris was sleeping with her father. Leda and Avery come back together as friends as Avery and Atlas’s relationships crumble. Leda decides she must become a better person; she does not want to be the evil one any more. She starts trying to help her friends with their problems and quits blackmailing them. Muriel has other ideas, though, and tries to set Leda up as a drug addict. Avery exposes Calliope as a con artist, but has to put off dealing with her to save Leda. Life in the Tower is never dull. McGee’s unique use of multi-character point of views keeps the reader inside the heads of all the characters, making the reader an integral part of their story. McGee’s reality-TV style of bouncing from character to character will connect with even the most struggling of readers.—Barbara Allen.