Set in the distant future, at a time where drastic climate change has left the world bleak and dry, seventeen year old Gaia Stone and her family have always served the Enclave.
Living outside the Enclave wall in the small town of Wharfton, her mother is a highly revered midwife. Gaia has been a midwife-in-training for many years. The first three babies born each month in Wharfton are given to the Enclave to be "advanced". One day, after delivering her first baby, Gaia goes home to discover an Enclave soldier in her living room. Her parents have been arrested, and it has something to do with the quota of babies that get delivered to the Enclave each month.
After her parents' arrest, Gaia slowly starts to unravel the mysteries and politics surrounding the Enclave, and everything she's ever known to be true comes into question. Her plan then is simple: rescue her parents from the Enclave prison and run away to the Dead Forest, a place where there is supposedly habitable life away from the oppression of the Enclave, but also a place many believe does not exist. She is thus captured and through a series of highly tense and action-packed events, befriends many unlikely people to aid her on her journey.
Birthmarked is the first installment in a new dystopian trilogy. I found myself drawn into Gaia's world from the first page, and eager to learn everything as she discovered the secrets of the Enclave. By the end I was pretty invested in the characters. Gaia Stone is one of the best female protagonists I've read in YA literature since Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games). The second installment, Prized, hits bookstores in November and it has become one of my most anticipated books for fall.
For fans of:
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Matched by Ally Condie
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
-Sam
No comments:
Post a Comment