Review: Monument 14 - Emmy Laybourne

Where I got it: ARC from publisher
Rating: 3.5 stars  

Cover Rating: 3.5 stars (The characters look really computer animated, but besides that it's not bad.)
Genre: Young Adult

Publication Date: June 5, 2012

Publisher: Feiwel and Friends

Page Count: 294 p.

Buy it: Book Depository / Amazon
Add it: Goodreads

Dean said goodbye to his mother and brother and rushed to get on his bus, just like every other day. Then it started to hail. His bus driver lost control of the bus in this sudden storm and crashed into a pole. Meanwhile, through the bus window, Dean sees his brothers bus crash into the front of a Greenway store. Little does Dean know that this store will serve as a sanctuary for the survivors between the two buses for the next few weeks. Things are happening in the world, and there is no stopping them; there is only survival.

I seem to keep reading books I didn't know were the beginnings of series. So I finish this with some pretty big feelings of disappointment, but then Goodreads is like "Bitch please this is book one" and then I sigh, because of course it is. Not that I have anything against series, there just seems to be an abundance of them. Now that I've ranted about something that has little to do with the actual content of this book, let's get to it.

So first I'm just going to point out something that nearly discouraged me from continuing to read this book. There were a couple of lines that made me go "What!? Who talks like that?". For example: "Jake bent down and got up in her grill." and "And he sure did grab himself a table leg."Those lines both made me cringe a little, luckily they were in the beginning of the book and I decided to persist. I don't think there were any more horrific lines like these, but if there were the story was so good I didn't notice.

It was interesting to have this novel written like a sort of journal of the events as they unfold. Dean was a pretty like-able character, even if at times he was quite strange or dark. It seems tricky to pen a character that people can like but also be a bit weary of. There are plenty of those types in this novel. I don't want to talk about too many of those characters, because it's a bit spoilery. However, I did really appreciate the characters in this novel, they all made the novel unfold in an excellent sensical way.

Another thing I really loved was the disasters. You had some typical ones, but then there were some I never even think about. There are so many things that can go wrong if even one thing crashes. This novel was set in 2024 I believe, so not too distant future. Really, it could have been set tomorrow and things would have been about the same. I see why the author set it ahead and it worked. It's terrifying to think of how bad off we would be if something of this magnitude happened globally. I mean, terrible things have hit certain areas, but we haven't (knock on wood) had anything with such a global devastation.

I ended up really enjoying this book, but hated the ending. Now that I know it's the first book in a series, the ending isn't quite as bad though. If you like survival/dystopian type stories, make sure you check this one out. I can't wait to see what happens with everyone next!

First Line:
"Your mother hollers that you're going to miss the bus."

Favorite Lines:
"One more lady was dead. Add her to the millions dead outside and she figured pretty small. But to us, she was big."