Thursday, June 12, 2014

Pure by Julianna Baggott | Book Review

(Such a pretty cover for such a horrifyingly bleak book!  (But so well-written!))

Throwback Review!

According to Goodreads, I read Pure in April 2013 and gave it 3 of 5 stars and couldn't be bothered to actually write a review.  :/  Yet I jumped at reading Fuse and considering paying for Burn.  Hmm.  I don't make sense even to myself sometimes.

I do remember being confused when I started reading it because I thought I was reading a YA award-winning book and it is pretty gruesome.  Like, Stephen King level of terrifying.  But so, so, so well-written and you really get inside the characters and get super invested in finding out what happens to them.  Anyway, turns out it is a YA award winner:  Alex Award.  So it is definitely a grown-up book, but supposedly with teen appeal.  I guess I can see that.  The main character is a teen.

And don't get me wrong:  now that I've finished the trilogy I highly recommend it.  In fact, someday I'd like to do a re-read straight through without having to wait a year between each book.

Here's the Goodreads synopsis/review for your plot summary:

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . . 
Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.

Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . . 
There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it's his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her. 

When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

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