March 15, 2024
Grades 9-12 Nine months after the adults in her town turned into giant beasts and students barricaded themselves in the schools, Kay is thrown Outside and left for dead. As a member of the Jefferson High student council, she accidentally found out the truth about missing president Kyle: he's gone and not coming back, while VP Simon has been lying to the remaining students about messages and rulings from Kyle. Kay has some measure of luck on her side, though, as she's picked up by the cheerleaders of Moore High--the school that was once Jefferson's rival. Named an exile of Jefferson, she has to be guarded by the king's right-hand man, Brick, until they all believe she's not a spy. Life at Moore High is completely different: the students work together and take care of one another, while those at Jefferson argue and starve and wait for a savior. The frenetic action scenes can be difficult to follow, and the cast, large in scope, hard to track, but this is a unique take on survivalism for fans of Michael Grant's Gone series.
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March 1, 2024
Teens in high schools that used to be rivals struggle to survive after the world ends. Before, Kay Kim was Jefferson High's Student Council secretary, famed for her inability to lie convincingly. For the past nine months, 18-year-old Kay, along with the rest of the student body, has been struggling to survive. Monstrous Growns, formed from the mutilated bodies of the town's adults, have been killing indiscriminately. Despite sending out jocks to scavenge for food, Jefferson students are starving. The Council holds power through numerous laws. After they exile Kay, she's given asylum by rival Moore High, where the students--under the rule of King Max, who's inspired by an online medieval role-playing game, and Merlin, who calls herself a wizard--are well fed and battle ready. Kay hopes they'll help save her school and find Kyle, Jefferson's lost president, but instead she becomes embroiled in a tumultuous power struggle. The depiction of the current social hierarchy provides intriguing parallels with the Before times, and Kay's challenges with dissembling and the importance of truth-telling are recurring themes. While the Growns are gruesome, the mechanics behind their creation require a suspension of disbelief. Similarly, the individual plot elements are intriguing and surprising, but they become overly complicated, diluting the impact of the new post-apocalyptic normal. The easily anticipated romance is a believable slow burn. Kay's surname cues Korean ancestry; there's some racial diversity among side characters. Thematically intriguing with shocking twists, but overly convoluted. (Post-apocalyptic. 14-18)
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May 1, 2024
Gr 9 Up-Thanks to a virus, the adults of Brockton, CT, have become physically banded together (in a gruesomely literal way), leaving high school students such as Kay Kim to decide how to protect themselves and create some sort of social order. Kay's position on the student council at Jefferson puts her in a place of power, until she uncovers a lie and finds herself unceremoniously exiled from the school. An unexpected rescue lands her at crosstown rival Moore High, now run by the chaotic and demanding King Max in a social hierarchy styled after a beloved video game. The "dragons" created by the mutilated bodies of the adults are a background danger compared to the cutthroat politics and power struggles amongst the living inside Moore High, and as Kay scrambles to stay alive long enough to learn the ropes of her new surroundings, decisions about who to trust take on life-or-death implications. Meanwhile, back at Jefferson, Kay's friend Nirali has realized that Kay's disappearance is suspect and certainly not the suicide leadership is claiming, and so begins her own campaign to find out what's going on. In this post-apocalyptic high school rivalry full of revolting human monsters, Sparks does a fantastic job showcasing the internalized and sometimes violently decided questions teens have about trust, loyalty, and friendship. Lacking deeper characterizations and without enough back story, the plot keeps readers scrambling to catch up and there are quite a few unanswered questions. VERDICT A fun but dense read; for fans of gruesome monsters and political drama.-Allie Stevens
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