89. The Line Between by Tosca Lee

Listened to the audio via CHIRP
read by Cassandra Campbell
Unabridged audio (10:07)
2019, Howard Books
389 pgs.
Adult Dystopia
Finished 9/16/19
Goodreads rating:  4.22 - 1373 ratings
My rating:  5
Setting: Dystopian US/Colorado mid-country area, some on-the-road

First line/s: "The farmer moved into the woods looking for his pigs."

My comments:  This contemporary dystopian thriller set in a cult enclave and the area between Iowa and Colorado is an excellent thriller with the range of unsettling events between a religious cult and the end of the world being brought about by a deadly flue - quick death with no cure.  The protagonist, Wynter, was one pretty cool, strong, smart female.  Couldn't put it down.
     The sequel to this book, which comes out at the end of thew week, believe it or not, sounds like another really tnese ride.  I think I'm gonna have to wait awhile to get over this one before I read that one!

Goodreads synopsis:  In this frighteningly believable thriller from New York Times bestselling author Tosca Lee, an extinct disease re-emerges from the melting Alaskan permafrost to cause madness in its victims. For recent apocalyptic cult escapee Wynter Roth, it’s the end she’d always been told was coming.
          When Wynter Roth is turned out of New Earth, a self-contained doomsday cult on the American prairie, she emerges into a world poised on the brink of madness as a mysterious outbreak of rapid early onset dementia spreads across the nation.
          As Wynter struggles to start over in a world she’s been taught to regard as evil, she finds herself face-to-face with the apocalypse she’s feared all her life—until the night her sister shows up at her doorstep with a set of medical samples. That night, Wynter learns there’s something far more sinister at play and that these samples are key to understanding the disease.
         Now, as the power grid fails and the nation descends into chaos, Wynter must find a way to get the samples to a lab in Colorado. Uncertain who to trust, she takes up with former military man Chase Miller, who has his own reasons for wanting to get close to the samples in her possession, and to Wynter herself.
          Filled with action, conspiracy, romance, and questions of whom—and what—to believe, THE LINE BETWEEN is a high-octane story of survival and love in a world on the brink of madness.

11. Monument 14 - Emmy Laybourne

#1 in the Monument 14 Trilogy

2012 Square Fish (Feiwel & Friends) a branch of Macmillan

294 pgs. (plus 40+ afterwards)

YA Dystopian Fantasy

Finished 2/11/2014

Goodreads Rating: 3.84 (6,000+ ratings)

My Rating:  4.5  Really liked it a lot - super entertaining

TPPL

Setting: 2024 Monument, Colorado - just outside Colorado Springs

1^st paragraph:  "Your mother hollers that you're going to miss the bus.  She can see it coming down the street.  You don't stop and hug her and tell her you love her.  You don't thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother.  Of course not - you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner."

My comments:  :It's been a long time since I read a book in one (long) sitting.  But this one grabbed me right from the start and I was totally entertained until the last page.  Fourteen kids trapped in a superstore while the air outside is filled with all sorts of nasty chemicals that affect them in different ways. Crazies trying to force themselves in.  Survival.  A bully.  A couple of jocks.  A nerd.  A reader. A hottie.  A techie.  A non-English speaker.  A Bible-thumper.  A loudmouth know-it-all.  A couple of sweeties.  All ranging in ages from 5 to 17.  All told in the voice of one of the high-schoolers, an imperfect(yay!), though thoughtful young man.  However, the added-on 40+ pages at the end were totally unnecessary. This is a GREAT story for a YA reluctant reader!

Goodreads Review  Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.   In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.