Fiona Shaw (2) (1964–)

I struggled with this book at first. I picked it up last August and just couldn't get into it... so in a move very unlike the completionist in me I put it down again...

This time around I was easily able to sink into the world of Lydia Weekes, her son Charlie and Dr. Markham.

This is very much a love story but not just romantic love. It is the love of a mother for a quiet and different child. It is that child trying to deal with the break up of his parents marriage and trying to figure out the depression it brings to his mother: "He didn’t know if she was happy or sad, because she wasn’t there."

And it is about finding love in unexpected and wonderful places. It is about finding family not by blood but by shared bonds. Some of my favorite scenes in the book were between Dr. Jean and Charlie as she teaches him about beekeeping... or perhaps just watching him in the garden.

I know there is a movie of this book which I have not seen but I was sad to hear that the ending was changed. Obviously books and films are different mediums with different demands but in a world with so few LGBT movies it is sad to see it was changed arguably to the worse.… (more)

This dystopian setting of this YA novel may be a tongue in cheek jab at the current US President’s “wall obsession,” only I doubt he’s organized enough to have evil scientists in on any kind of nefarious plot, so no worries there. In this world, England is cut off from the rest of Europe for their own safety. There is a virus, and everyone from anywhere else is deported.

Jacob lives at an orphanage after his scientist parents die in a tragic car wreck, until the day he escapes and eventually meets up with a gang who call themselves The Out-Walkers. They plan on walking out of England evading the authorities by staying out of doors and off the electronic monitoring grid.

The story was much longer than it had to be, but I didn’t mind because I was so invested in all the characters and their fate. Jake and his dog are the stars, but the entire cast of characters will tug at your heart.

It isn’t hard to imagine a scenario like this playing out somewhere in the world today at all.

Highly recommend!
Thanks to the KidLitExchange for the review copy… (more)

I got a copy of this book to review through the Amazon Vine program. This is a post-apocalyptic read with a middle grade boy as the lead, it’s set in England.

I read the first 75 pages of this and then set it aside. I just could not get into the story and found the strange punctuation annoying. When people are talking it's designated by a -, rather than quotations. It makes it really hard to tell who is saying what. This just wasn't for me.

The story is intense and action-packed but I found the punctuation really distracting. I also could not really engage with the story and the characters. There were a lot of characters introduced very rapidly and the punctuation prevented you from being able to follow who was saying what, so it was hard to engage with them.

Overall while this wasn’t awful, it wasn’t great either. It is an intense action-packed story of survival right from the get-go. However, the strange writing style was frustrating for me and I just couldn’t stay focused on the story.… (more)