My Rating ~ Five stars
RELEASED: 2 October 2018
Publisher: Simon & Schuster books for young readers
Format: Hardback
Pages: 390
Blurb
The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers.
Until the taps run dry.
Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbours and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life—and the life of her brother—is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.
Review
The thing I love about Neal Schusterman books, as with Scythe, is that they give you scenarios that make great talking points. The “what if’s” and “what would I do’s” that make for great conversations! Dry brings us a not too unrealistic situation of the taps being turned off because there’s no longer enough water. Of how people might act when faced with that threat, and how those actions might become more desperate and dire as the crisis continues. A true drought, as described in this book, is a unique disaster in so much as the severe time limit human beings can survive without water.
After their parents set out to collect water from a desalination centre at the beach and Alyssa and her brother Garrett can’t contact them, they set out with their neighbour, Kelton, who’s family are doomsday preppers (and the only one’s with water) to find them. Their journey brings them into contact with desperate, and sometimes dangerous, people as their search for their parents turns to a search for water to ensure their own survival.
I am hopeless at drinking water, but I have to admit I have never drunk so much water as when I was reading this book! Apparently just reading the description of how thirsty someone is can immediately have me reaching for the water bottle!
I absolutely loved Dry and will be thinking about it for a long while to come!
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