4. We Are Omega by Justin Woolley

read on my iPhone
12/9/18 by Lonely Robot Books (not many reviews yet)
328 pgs.
YA SciFi/Dystopia
Finished 1/7/18
Goodreads rating:  4.55 - 11 ratings
My rating:  2 (or less....)
Setting: 2025 Nevada, USA

First line/s:  "I push my face into the pillow, trying to muffle the sound of my sobs."

My comments:  Told from two points of view - Molly and Miles.  Both are unlikable from the start.  As I approached the end I didn't care who won or lost, who was killed or died, I just wanted the story to end.  I disliked the protagonists equally as much as I did the antagonists.  And if Molly said "netting" one more time, I was going to scream!

Goodreads synopsis: I AM. YOU ARE. WE ARE OMEGA.
          Six years ago an alien spacecraft crashed into the remote Nevada desert, releasing a virus that killed one-fifth of the Earth's population.
          Molly McManus, who lost her parents to the plague, can't forgive the aliens just because they give humanity a few new toys. For Wells Marsden, a computer hacker desperate to atone for his past, the aliens might just offer the fresh start he needs.
          Both Molly and Wells find themselves, for very different reasons, at the Institute for the Betterment of Humanity – a prestigious facility for gifted youth to learn from the aliens. But when they discover Earth's visitors aren't as benevolent as they claim they must escape the Institute, join a mysterious resistance group known only as Omega, and save humanity from disaster – so long as humanity itself doesn't get in their way.
          WE ARE OMEGA is a science fiction adventure featuring hacking, telekinetic powers, giant alien crabs out to control the planet and two troubled teens who just might be the best hope we have. It's a thundering read for fans of Illuminae, The 5th Wave, and I Am Number Four.

9. Burned - Ellen Hopkins

Audio read by Laura Flanagan, who gets high marks
For: YA, definitely older YA
published 2006
5 unabridged cd's
5 hrs. 15 min.
544 pages - told in free verse form
Rating: Ooooh...hard to say......some is 2...some is 4....so 3, I guess

After I heard the first minute or so I almost didn't continue. I should have realized that this beginning part was definitely foreshadowing. Pattyn Von Stratton, just ending her junior year in high school, is the oldest of seven sisters with pregnant mom finally about to have another sibling. However, this time it will...finally...be a boy.

Thre's so much to say about Pattyn and her family. They're Mormons who live in Carson City, Nevada. The father is an abusive drunk. The mother, although the main target of the abuse, sits on the couch and watches reality tv all day while the daughters cook and clean and vacuum and change diapers. The girls are raised to obey the father, be righteous, attend Sunday testimonies, and never...ever...think for themselves. They wear homemade clothing and have few friends.

When a male classmate becomes interested in Pattyn, she is torn in two directions - what her bishop and father have taught her, and what her own feelings..and all the reading she's done....are telling her. Then her father catches her in an uncompromising position and sends her for the summer to stay with his estranged sister in the middle of Nevada. This is where I had my second wonderings about the book. Aunt Jeannette was a wonderful, caring, thoughtful, liberal feminist who had nothing good at all to say or do with the father. Why would he ever send Pattyn there? And then Pattyn has a wonderful, love (and sex)-filled summer learning to drive, to ride, and to trust herself and her feelings.

But disaster after disaster happens once she has to go back home. One bad thing right after the next. The ending , after all these disasters, is what any thoughtful reader should have realized right from the first few lines was going to happen.

You hear the last words of the story and say, to yourself: "Okay." "What?" "Well...." and "Yuh, I guess so." I KNOW that if I had any inkling about what was going to take place in this book, I wouldn't have read it. I don't know if I'm glad I had no inkling and DID read it, or would have rather not read it at all.

50. Death Assemblage - Susan Cummins Miller

Frankie MacFarlane #1
Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2002
Rating: 3.5

Set in Pair-a-Dice, Nevada, a tiny "hick" town in the northern part of the state, our heroine, six-footer Frankie MacFarlane, is working on her graduate thesis in geology and smarting over a broken romance. She has nine lives, a huge curiosity, and is very nosy. There's a huge cast of characters, murders, break-ins, strangers, and an inordinate amount of clues that DO come together at the end. It's improbable, interesting, and a fun read. The suicide? accident? murder? of her ex sets up a future novel...

It's not a "polished" story - many clues and much information are introduced weakly, but it's the first in a series (even possibly her first book?) and it will be interesting to see if character development is better in future novels.