Title: The Treatment
Author:  Suzanne Young
Publisher/Year:  Simon Pulse 4/29/14
Length:  352 Pages
Series: The Program #2

Overview

Can Sloane and James survive the lies and secrets surrounding them, or will The Program claim them in the end? Find out in this sequel to The Program, which Publishers Weekly called “chilling and suspenseful.”

How do you stop an epidemic?

Sloane and James are on the run after barely surviving the suicide epidemic and The Program. But they’re not out of danger. Huge pieces of their memories are still missing, and although Sloane and James have found their way back to each other, The Program isn’t ready to let them go.

Escaping with a group of troubled rebels, Sloane and James will have to figure out who they can trust, and how to take down The Program. But for as far as they’ve come, there’s still a lot Sloane and James can’t remember. The key to unlocking their past lies with the Treatment—a pill that can bring back forgotten memories, but at a high cost. And there’s only one dose.

Ultimately when the stakes are at their highest, can Sloane and James survive the many lies and secrets surrounding them, or will The Program claim them in the end?

My Thoughts

the entire time that i was reading this story, i was thinking that it was part of a trilogy, but nope – i believe that it’s just a 2 book series.  In any event, i think that we got a decent ending to the journey that these guys took.  When we pick up in this 2nd book, we are with Sloane and James when they are on the run from The Program – they had escaped and fled at the direction of Michael Realm – once they managed to find one another and really begin to internalize what’s going on with The Program.

What this story is, is a question about who you can trust, and if you think that you can trust them, can you trust all that they tell you since you can’t remember what they are telling you to be correct from the past.  Apologies for the circular notion here, but it’s where we go with them. While Sloane and James believe that they are in love and believe that they were in love before, there are things that come up that they aren’t sure they can believe since they don’t have their memories.  When the rebels are then involved – Dallas and Cas to be exact, things become even muddier.  Dallas was in the Program before so she doesn’t have her memories either, but Cas who wasn’t in the Program is just part of the cause .

We are taken on escape after escape so that Sloane and James can stay safe while the rebels figure out how to take down the Program.  Realm comes back and makes things more confusing since he and Sloane have a mini-past from the program and then briefly afterwards when James wasn’t feeling emotions towards Sloane.  It makes things harder since we know that Realm loves her, even if she says that she doesn’t feel the same.

What we’re forced to question is who we can trust like i’ve said before, and whether it’s worth it or not.  I think that as the last third or so of the book heats up, we find that there’s so much more of a gray area around everyone.  Trust is broken, folks are captured and secrets are revealed for most.

I have to say though that the ending is what i expected and the epilogue took us to a nice place that was needed.  We find the resolution that we were hoping for with some, and deal with the pain and absence of others since there is tragedy among friends.  Where other series in the genre leave things open ended, this one actually gives us a sense of closure – and that’s something that’s a welcome change.  I hope you guys enjoy it!