Events

2014 EVENTS:
Holly Bourne, Non Pratt and James Dawson - 30th October
Becca Fitzpatrick - 15th November

Friday 22 August 2014

GUEST REVIEW: In A Handful Of Dust - Mindy McGinnis

Friday 22 August 2014
GENRE: Futuristic/Dystopia
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Harper360
FORMAT: Paperback
RATING: 4 Stars

Read Sofia's review of the first book, Not A Drop To Drink.

This book is not currently available through Waterstones. Expected publication: 23rd September 2014.

SUMMARY
The only thing bigger than the world is fear.

Lucy’s life by the pond has always been full. She has water and friends, laughter and the love of her adoptive mother, Lynn, who has made sure that Lucy’s childhood was very different from her own. Yet it seems Lucy’s future is settled already—a house, a man, children, and a water source—and anything beyond their life by the pond is beyond reach.

When disease burns through their community, the once life-saving water of the pond might be the source of what’s killing them now. Rumors of desalinization plants in California have lingered in Lynn’s mind, and the prospect of a “normal” life for Lucy sets the two of them on an epic journey west to face new dangers: hunger, mountains, deserts, betrayal, and the perils of a world so vast that Lucy fears she could be lost forever, only to disappear in a handful of dust.

REVIEW
After finishing Not a Drop to Drink, I immediately asked YABirmingham if they had a proof copy of the sequel and they did! Unfortunately for some reason, I was busy when I first got it so I only just got to reading it last week. Yes, it took me over a week to finish it but that is simply because I’ve been busy. This was a great sequel to a fabulous book and I can’t wait for any future books by Mindy McGinnis.

The sequel follows another character who appears in Not a Drop to Drink and that is Lucy. I loved reading from Lucy’s point of view because she’s quite different from Lynn. She didn’t feel threatened by everything and everyone like Lynn did. She was a great protagonist and I definitely preferred her POV, compared to Lynn’s. Lucy was strong(not quite as strong as Lynn was) but she was trusting and kind and she didn’t feel the need to kill everything that came in her way.

The start of this book I found to be quite slow and confusing due to what was happening. We are thrown back into the world despite missing years of their lives since this one takes place quite a while after the first one ended.It deals with illnesses and medicine and gives a lot of biology related facts that just went over my head(I strongly dislike biology). However, once the actual story started, it really picked up and I found it addictive. What I love about these books is the writing. Mindy McGinnis’ writing is stunningly beautiful and it keeps you captivated when you’re reading. I was worried slightly when I found out there was a companion novel to Not a Drop to Drink because I loved Not a Drop to Drink as a standalone and usually sequels aren’t as good. However Mindy McGinnis proved me wrong because this book was just as good as Not a Drop to Drink, if not slightly better. I came out of this book wondering why I couldn’t write like her because her writing is one of my favourites to read and I shall be definitely be picking up her future books.

The thing that stopped this book from becoming a 5 star read was the supporting characters. Stebbs wasn’t around for most of the book and he was one of my favourite characters in the first book. As for the new characters we meet, I didn’t particularly like any of them for some reason. We didn’t stick with one character long enough to grow an attachment to someone and when I did start liking someone, they left. However I did really enjoy Fletcher and I thought he was an interesting character. I’d love to have a whole book about his story because there was a lot more to him than we got to see.

Another amazing part of this book is the plot. I can’t tell you what happens because that would be spoilery but you will find it hard to guess what happens in this book. There were so many twists that you couldn’t predict. It was so unpredictable which added to the fact that it was fast paced to make a captivating and addictive read. I wish I could talk about certain things that happened within the novel but alas spoilers.


Whenever anything weird and shocking happened, this was basically me.

I really hope Mindy McGinnis writes more within this world because it is such a unique world that I love to read about. After that ending, I can expect that there may be more books in this series if this one does well so definitely go buy it when it’s out on the 23rd September. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars and I highly recommend it.

- Sofia.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Content © YA Birmingham. All rights reserved.
Template by Color It YOU. Powered by Blogger.