Book Summary (taken from goodreads):
They tell me the country looked different back then.
They talk of open borders and flowing rivers.
They say the world was green.
But drought swept across the globe and the United States of the past disappeared under a burning sky.
Enora Byrnes lives in the aftermath, a barren world where water has become the global currency. In a life dominated by duty to family and community, Enora is offered a role within an entity that controls everything from water credits to borders. But it becomes clear that not all is as it seems. From the wasted confines of her small town to the bowels of a hidden city, Enora will uncover buried secrets that hide an unthinkable reality.
As truth reveals the brutal face of what she has become, she must ask herself: how far will she go to retain her humanity?
Review
Setting
This book takes place in a dystopian type setting where fresh drinking water is scarce. The story is told from the point of view of Enora. We start when Enora is in high school (or the equivalent of) and then go on to when she is recruited by the Sentinels. It follows her career and journey from there. A lot of the information we get as readers is limited since we are only seeing things through Enora’s point of view. While we see some of her home town and the training facility where she is trained to be a Sentinel, we don’t know a whole lot of the world save for the information Enora tells us. While I think this was done well, it did leave a little to be desired in way of knowing the worldbuilding.
Characters
There are plenty of characters who come and go in this novel. The main ones, however, who stick around besides Enora are Bram, Drake, Springer, and in some ways Lina. I felt like the author did a good job of leaving you guessing who can be trusted and who can’t. It’s a constant guessing game of “Are THEY the ones to betray Enora?” which kept me turning the pages. I did wish there was more to some of the background and side characters. For example, Lina didn’t really seem to have a lot of depth to her.
Plot
Each section of this book makes the plot go faster. It’s a little like seeing a youtube video of a show where they speed up the film whenever a character says a certain word. The ending of the book got me interested to see what else will happen. Admittedly, there were parts of this book where I wish the revelations came as more of a surprise. While I couldn’t exactly guess at what was going to happen, it would have been nice if Enora hadn’t already known that bad things were probably happening.
Overall
Very interesting premise to a story and I think done pretty well. I’ll be interested to see how the next book goes.
May you get lost in a book,
Chrissy