The End by Mats Strandberg: ARC Book Review

What would you do if you knew when the world was going to end? That’s exactly what happens when it’s announced that Foxworth, a massive meteor, is headed straight for Earth – and now it’s only a few weeks away.

The End is told from the perspective of two teens: Simon, a 17-year-old whose whole world just came crumbling down, literally, and Lucinda, a cancer patient, who suddenly feels less isolated with the entire world now staring down their own mortality in the same way she has had to for years.

And, if things couldn’t get any more screwed up, Tilda – Simon’s ex-girlfriend and Lucinda’s ex-best friend – is found dead and presumed murdered. But with the apocalypse looming, no one is too concerned about finding her killer. Except for Simon and Lucinda that is.

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Hush by Dylan Farrow: ARC Book Review

Hush, a YA dystopian fantasy novel, tells the story of Shae, a 17-year-old girl who lives along with her mother in a small farmhouse outside a poor village. The village itself on the skirts of a barren, wasteland where ink and all forms of reading and writing have been banned due to the ill fate, aptly titled the “Indigo Death,” or more common, simply the “Blot,” that befalls anyone who participates in such activities.

In a world where any form of documentation is prohibited, collective consciousness rules. But because of the constant fear surrounding everyone’s existence – worried that even one small thought or misplaced comment will cause illness to befall them – what is considered “the truth” is often a warped view on reality. And with no documentation to prove as much, people’s opinions are easily swayed.