When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, a group of teens is forced to make life and death decisions in this harrowing story of survival from New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman, and Jarrod Shusterman.

The drought – or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it – has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t take long showers, don’t panic. Until the taps run dry.

Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbours and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return, she and her younger brother must team up with an unlikely group in search of water. Each of them will need to make impossible choices to survive.

Dry is a young adult novel that explores what would happen to civilisation if there was no water left. Written by father-son team Neal & Jarrod Shusterman, Dry is dedicated to those affected by climate change and this book does a fabulous job of showing us the harsh reality of climate change and our possible future with no clean drinking water.

Over time, water has become more and more limited until all of a sudden there’s just none left. The book may be set in Southern California, but readers all over the world will be able to recognise elements of their own town within the pages of this book.

Reading Dry can really cause the reader to feel hydrated and be thankful for any drop of water they have near them.

“We search the surrounding streets for the BMW, all the while my fever making me feel even more miserable. We pass vacant storefronts and small parking lots, and I’m pressing the panic button the keys, but with no luck.”

The book switches POV between quite a few people. We have 16 year old Alyssa, the main character, who is fair, trustworthy and moral. She’s in charge of her 10 year old brother Garret when their parents go missing.

They team up with their neighbour Kelton. He was one of my favourite characters. His dad is a really big ‘prepper’ for the end of the world and he’s unfair, selfish and when the taps run dry he doesn’t want to share any water with anyone else. As a result, catastrophic events ensue.

Along the way, the group also join forces with the brazen and terrifying Jacqui and the incredibly cunning and conniving Henry. Together, these teenagers embark on a road trip across Southern California in an attempt to find their family, food, water and a place to ride out the disaster until help arrives.

As you can imagine, things go wrong and tensions rise among the characters. Some of them bond over the course of the novel, but a couple of them are still very much flawed by the end.

“I grab Kelton under the shoulders and pick him up. I shoot a glance to Garrett, who’s been hiding, crouched by a sofa. We drag Kelton down the hall toward the front door, Alyssa leading the way. As we make our way there, I try to take stock of what’s actually happening around us, but it’s too dark — just shapes and outlines.”

Dry is a gripping read, with heightened stakes and a fast-paced plot, and an incredibly believable premise. The book shows us how desperate people can get when they think they might be dying, and how quickly members of the public can panic and turn on one another.

This may be promoted as dystopian fiction, but it could well be a prediction of the future.

I don’t think the multiple POVs were necessary to the book, and I would’ve been perfectly content if there were only a couple of character perspectives used.

Despite that, I highly recommend this novel, particularly for any readers who love near-future or apocalyptic-style plots.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Dry
Neal Shusterman & Jarrod Shusterman
October 2018
Walker Books Australia

At almost sixteen, Evie’s life isn’t all she’d hoped it would be. She lives in the dodgy end of town with her mum and her mum’s deadbeat boyfriend, Seb; and adolescent scoliosis means Evie’s forced to wear a back brace until she’s stopped growing.

Then one night, she meets Gabe. Breathtakingly handsome, he crashes, spectacularly, into Evie’s life. He says their meeting was no accident and convinces Evie he’s been sent to turn her fortunes around. Evie’s best friend, Paige, dismisses him as a pot-head, but Paige has issues of her own and has started spending all her time chasing older men instead of higher grades.

As the weeks go by, Evie’s luck seems to be on a constant upswing and she begins to wonder if she and Gabe really were ‘meant’ to meet; even if she’s noticed that so many aspects of Gabe’s story don’t add up…

But there’s someone else waiting in the wings and, for Evie as well as for Gabe, life is about to get a whole lot more complicated.

Heaven Sent is a YA novel by debut author S.J Morgan. The story follows teenage protagonist Evie, and the novel explores themes of friendship, family and relationship.

The premise of the novel is quite different — Gabe crashes his car into Evie’s bedroom one night, and then feels unexplainably drawn to her. It’s almost as if he’s a guardian angel for her, even though he’s noticeably absent for a lot of the novel and his disappearances are rarely explained.

“I was so busy thinking about his bizarre quotation and the overall odd reaction that it took me utterly by surprise when he leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. ‘You trusted me, Evie,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you.’ He then placed a hand where his lips had landed, as if he wanted to seal the kiss in place.”

Gabe is a really unlikable character. He’s mysterious but confusing, distant and withdrawn. He quotes scripture at her, and his dialogue often doesn’t make much sense. He’s cryptic in a creepy way, and I didn’t find myself sympathising for him in any way. At one point, he ‘gifts’ Evie some furniture and then you find out that the furniture was actually stolen!

I found it incredibly bizarre that Evie wanted to find out more about him, let alone actually spend any time with him.

I like the complex relationship between Evie and her father, and also Evie and her best friend. I think it’s important for YA novels to show fractured female friendships because that is very representative of high school and teenage life.

“There was nothing else for it. If Paige was going to cut off communication with me, then I’d just have to go ‘round there and demand she tell me why. It wasn’t as if we’d fallen out.”

There are noticeable flaws within the novel. The premise is unrealistic and the ending predictable. The dialogue is quite forced in some scenes and not at all how teenagers speak. Additionally, the relationship between Evie and Gabe is just strange, not enticing or exciting. And the conclusion of the novel is so fast-paced and Gabe’s behaviour doesn’t really make sense.

“I was just Evie. So, after the car crash, why hadn’t Gabe wished me well and moved on? What had kept him coming back? What kept him still coming back? What kept him still coming back? Did he feel sorry for me? Guilty? Was I the stone in his shoe, or did he think I was some sort of tortured soul who needed to be rescued?”

This may be a young adult novel but I’d actually recommend this for much younger readers, around 10-14 years of age.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Heaven Sent
S.J Morgan
October 2018
Midnight Sun Publishing

When they got in the lift, they were strangers (though didn’t that guy used to be on TV?): Sasha, who is desperately trying to deliver a parcel; Hugo, who knows he’s the best-looking guy in the lift and is eyeing up Velvet, who knows what that look means when you hear her name and it doesn’t match the way she looks, or the way she talks; Dawson, who was on TV, but isn’t as good-looking as he was a few years ago and is desperately hoping no one recognizes him; Kaitlyn, who’s losing her sight but won’t admit it, and who used to have a poster of Dawson on her bedroom wall, and Joe, who shouldn’t be here at all, but who wants to be here the most.

And one more person, who will bring them together again on the same day every year.

Described as The Breakfast Club meets One Day, Floored is a collaborative young adult novel by seven bestselling and award-winning authors: Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Tanya Byrne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson and Eleanor Wood.

Six teenagers coincidentally end up in the same lift together at a TV broadcasting building. They’re joined by an older gentleman who seems unwell when he enters into the lift. The man suffers a medical episode and dies in the lift. And so begins their connection. The seven characters bond over the sudden death of this man, and these six strangers soon become friends.

“Ivy and I have always had this policy: brutal honesty. And, until recently, I’ve never been tempted to break it. It’s just that if I tell her I’m going to the bloke from the lift’s funeral, she’s bound to want to come with me. And for whatever reason, I feel like this is something I need to do alone. More than tat, it’s something that I want to do alone.”

If these teenagers had met under different circumstances, they probably wouldn’t have been friends. For example, Hugo is a self-entitled, womanising asshole who only cares about himself. Sasha is from a working class family who is trying to help out her father. These six characters are all incredibly different, but their lives become bound together when they witness this man’s death.

The novel takes place over approximately six years, and we follow these six characters as their lives intertwine and they stay in touch. For the first couple of years, they meet up on the anniversary of the lift incident. And then as they bond, some of them become close and spend much more time together.

There’s not a huge amount of plot to this novel; it is more of a character-driven story. The novel jumps forward in time a lot, mostly following these characters on the anniversary of the man’s death. Even though we find out little things about their lives and the authors tackle issues such as Alzheimer’s, friendship, family, love and sexuality, the book moves pretty slowly. There’s drama and tension and evidence of these teenagers navigating their lives, but I wouldn’t recommend this for readers who are looking for a lot of plot.

“I want to laugh and tell him he looks worse than I do, like he’s just seen a ghost. I want to tell him not to worry about me. But none of that comes out. He looks at me, and I burst into tears. The tears I’ve been trying so hard to hold in for so long.”

Unfortunately, I found it hard to really connect with all of the characters because we don’t spend much time with them. When there are seven main characters, the focus is divided and so I got to the end of the novel and felt like I wasn’t as invested in their storylines as I could’ve been.

Floored is a surprisingly smooth read, considering there are seven novelists in there. All the characters feel so different, but when they come together I didn’t feel jolted by different voices or writing styles. The plot flows really well.

Young adult readers will love this collaboration.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Floored
A Collaborative novel by Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Tanya Byrne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson and Eleanor Wood
July 2018
Pan Macmillan Publishers