Solstice, Book Review

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Book Description: (Per the Author)

Four ways to get Banished from the last surviving city on earth are: 1. Cut out your emotion tracker. 2. Join a religious cult. 3. Create a rebellion against the Legislature. 4. Fall in love.

Jezebel James does all four.

Jez is on the fast track to becoming a brilliant scientist with one goal--to save her city from total extinction.  Her caretakers have entrusted her with a secret plan to stop the rain from flooding the rest of the earth and start civilization anew.  But the more Jez learns about the price of a fresh beginning the more she realizes that carrying out the plan will lead to few survivors, and among the dead will be those she cares about the most.

My Thoughts:

Jane Redd is a pen name for Heather Moore, who is a USA Today bestselling author.  She submitted this book into a contest under a pen name.  I generally do not look for stories of this genre, but when I do read them I enjoy them, until I get pissed off over which characters die in the quest to improve society. At the end of this book, I was not pissed off over anything of that nature, but I was bummed to not have a conclusion.  The end of this book shows that there is a book 2 titled Lake Town.

Now with that being said, there is a great deal of things that I enjoyed tremendously about this book.  The writing style is superb.  The author created a society and world that had depth and that I could envision as I read.  The story moved slowly at first, but as the characters and world developed I saw that it needed to in order for the reader to really grasp what the levels, citizens and water logged world really looked and felt like.  The interweaving of the sun and solstice into the story line and emotional health of the citizens was genius in its delivery.  When I first started reading it I could not really see the importance or tie in to a solstice since everything discussed was rain, cloudy, etc., but as the story progressed the tie in became more clear and more relevant.

As I read the book I slipped more and more into this society and Jez's life.  I appreciated her going back and forth while she tried to control her emotions and figure out what to do, who to trust, etc.  I loved the development of all the characters and not just hers.  This was a story that was different from other books that discuss end of the world situations in a variety of ways.  It was feasible to see how society might try to function this way if something this extreme and catastrophic occurred.  In other books of this genre I never understood the potential of certain events happening, but here if all the world does become separated due to water and not enough land mass, it does make one wonder how people would survive.

As I mentioned above, I did not enjoy finding out there was no conclusion but more of a continuation at the end.  I feel that this is a compliment though because my mind was like "What! How does __and ___know each other", which is actually something I questioned while I read the book since Jaz mentioned some similarities.  So yes, not a fan of not having some answers about the key, her decisions, what happens next, etc., but I will most certainly read book 2 and I hope to be able to read it soon as I found this book a easy and enjoyable read.

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Currently free so you can enjoy the book over at Swoon Reads/ (This book is in a publishing contest sponsored by Macmillan. Help it get published by reading and rating the story)