Reading is my ESCAPE from Reality!

I don't remember going to sleep. All I remember is waking up here -- a place as familiar as my own face.

At least, it should be.

Fiona wakes up in her bedroom, but nothing is as it should be. Her room is filthy and seems like it has been neglected for a very long time. As she walks around her house, she realizes it has been abandoned. Her reflection looks like her older sister, like a woman. Last thing she remembers, she is thirteen. She has no idea what is going on when suddenly she hears a noise and is attacked by a man acting like a beast. She barely escapes with her life. And all of this happens in Chapter 1.

We gradually learn that this world is barren & deserted and it is dangerous to be female. Fiona is constantly in danger and trying to figure out what happened to the world she remembers, what she needs to do to survive and who she can trust.

I don't want to give anything away. I went into this book not really knowing what it was about and it swept me off my feet page 1, Chapter 1. I loved Fiona and found her character very believable. The fecs and the beasts were scary and dangerous. The premise of the story seemed possible. I even believed the attraction Fiona developed for the boy trying to save her. And there is no love triangle, which is a relief.

I enjoyed this so much that I immediately stared reading the sequel. And I looked on the author's website to see if there would be any more, so I could know what I was getting myself into. Would I have to wait for book 3? Good news and Bad news. There are only two books in the series and the author isn't planning on writing more. This is good because I just finished the second book and loved it just as much. Bad because I really enjoyed reading them. But, it was a good place to end. The story was over. No need to push it too far. Not every story has to be a trilogy.

Recommended to:

Fans of dystopian stories, young adults and people (like me) who enjoy reading young adult novels. This one is worth reading.

Note: This book is on the Sunshine State Young Readers Award nominee list for grades 6-8. We often have some of that list in our elementary school for 5th graders. This one has some sexual innuendo. It might go over 5th graders heads, but I will recommend to our librarian not to have this one in the elementary school.