Thursday, August 4, 2011

[Review] Days Like This by Alison Stewart

Title: Days Like This {goodreads}
Authors: Alison Stewart
Publication (dd/mm/yy): 01/08/11
Publisher: Penguin Australia
RRP: $19.95
Source: Publisher for review
Age: 14+
Pages: 300
My Rating:




Summary:

SHE HAS TO
ESCAPE.

BUT WHO ELSE IS OUT THERE?
AND CAN ANYONE
SURVIVE DAYS
LIKE THIS?


I    want    to    go    back
to the days when life made sense. The days before our parents
became strange; before the warming ate away at all the
living things in the world; before The Committee and their
Blacktroopers. Before the Wall.
Lily is a prisoner in her own home. Forced to stay inside by The
Committee and guarded by their increasingly distant parents,
Lily and her brother Daniel are beginning to ask why. Then,
when Daniel disappears just before his seventeeth birthday,
Lily knows she is next.

My thoughts: 

It is no mystery that the Dystopian genre is growing. Looking into a far changed society that has become otherworldly, I sometimes forget that these things happen supposedly on the other side of the world. Well this book happens to take place in Sydney!


Days Like This follows Lily, who has not stepped outside of her house since the Wall was built. The Warming has stripped the land bare; anyone living outside the priviledged area around Sydney is left in the barren wasteland to perish without the basic neccessities. Life at home has long turned sour, and when her twin brother Daniel disappears, Lily knows she has to escape at any cost.


I liked Lily as the protagonist. She loves her family, to the point where she will risk her life to save them. Her insanely strong will is so admirable. She does have her flaws - she is stubborn and can be irrational and clumsy, but that's what makes a great and likeable main character.


The people Lily meets are varied and bring a whole new dimension to the amount of damage and trauma the Community has brought them all.


The plot moves steadily, the mysteries surrounding the new world motivation enough for me to keep turning the pages.


There is a romance in the book, and while this book ends quite conclusively, if there does happen to be a sequel, I can tell there would be a love triangle. Lily has two guys of interest, though one guy cannot be trusted and so things are over before they even start.


Days Like This is a shocking tale of a corrupted society founded and coerced by greed, pride and vanity, and a girl whose familial loss brings her to a new world. The exploration of the future is always interesting, and Stewart's new book will get Aussie readers wondering, and edge-of-your-seat entertained to the end.

Quote:

First line

"'Oh no,' Lily said, jumping up. 'Not again.'




Buy:

* cheapest Australian e-store price

AUSTRALIAN RESIDENTS

Fishpond * | Readings | Dymocks | Angus & Robertson | Borders | The Nile

INTERNATIONAL READERS

Amazon | The Book Depository

All links from Booko, because I'm too lazy to search each individual store anymore.




I have received this review copy in return for an honest review.

Challenge: Aussie YA Challenge

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