Book stats (from Amazon):
Amazon rating: 3.0/5 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.5/5
Summary (from Amazon):
An unbelievable tale of adventure and romance, in the face of the darkest of nightmares.
Smallpox epidemics, floods, droughts — for sixteen-year-old Lucy, the end of the world came and went, taking 99% of the population with it. As the weather continues to rage out of control, and Sweepers clean the streets of plague victims, Lucy survives alone in the wilds of Central Park, hunting and foraging for food. But when she is rescued from a vicious pack of hunting dogs by a mysterious boy named Aidan, she reluctantly realizes she cannot continue on her own. She joins Aidan's band of survivors, yet a new danger awaits her: The Sweepers are looking for her, and they've laid a trap. There's something special about Lucy, and the Sweepers will stop at nothing to have her in their clutches.
Disclaimer: I do read books with protagonists named things other than Lucy.
I read this book a few months after it came out. I can't really remember how I found it exactly, but it was probably a recommendation either from my mom or from my local bookstore. I do remember that I bought it on Kindle, and read it in a few weeks. And then I read it a few more times, and convinced (read: harassed) several of my friends to read it. I recall an approximately four-hour-long bus trip with a friend of mine who had recently read this book that was spent almost entirely discussing this book and the characters.
This book is classified as Young Adult. It's written in third person. The main character is a teenage girl named Lucy. Without getting too spoiler-y, Lucy's family was killed by the plague that wiped out most of the human race, and now she lives in Central Park in New York City, surviving on her own. Lucy is somewhat similar to other female protagonists in dystopian/post-apocalyptic YA, but she is an interesting character on her own.
However, it's the other characters that really made this book stand out to me. From Grammalie Rose (who is probably one of the best characters I've read in any book) to Sammy (I liked him more than the love interest, Aidan, actually), the supporting characters are very unique. Their interactions with each other, Lucy, and the world around them make them some of the best-developed, and least-predictable, characters I've read about recently.
The plot itself is very well done. There are some minor inconsistencies I've heard tell of (although these are mostly in the statistics of how many people died and small things like that), and the ending of the novel is somewhat open, but I still enjoyed it. The romance doesn't overwhelm the plot, which was nice to see. As for the story itself, it revolves around Lucy and the others and their attempts to avoid the Sweepers, who seek to capture them - especially Lucy, for reasons I won't disclose so as not to spoil it.
This book was, I think, intended to be the beginning of a series, but I haven't found any details on a sequel. There is a companion novel/prequel that the author started to write and never finished (as far as I know), titled A Pocket Full of Posies, the first three chapters of which are available on the author's website.
Overall, an interesting take on dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction. 4/5 stars!
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