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Thursday 30 June 2011

Review: Those That Wake by Jess Karp

Title: Those that wake
Author: Jess Karp
Harcourt Children's Books

Plot
New York City’s spirit has been crushed. People walk the streets with their heads down, withdrawing from one another and into the cold comfort of technology. Teenagers Mal and Laura have grown up in this reality. They’ve never met. Seemingly, they never will.

But on the same day Mal learns his brother has disappeared, Laura discovers her parents have forgotten her. Both begin a search for their families that leads them to the same truth: someone or something has wiped the teens from the memories of every person they have ever known. Thrown together, Mal and Laura must find common ground as they attempt to reclaim their pasts.

Review
Firstly, generally, descriptions are boring for me but in this occasion it made me reading more, following to discover what is happening with the characters, what is the thing has caused the situation, etc.

The story reminded me to The Shining of Stephen King or TV serials such as The X-Files, where the impossible becomes real. As the story moves forward, it has an appearance of movie more and more.

Mal, with a hard life, with the break-up of his parents and the separation between his brother and him, join fights to earn. Laura, is the opposite of him, keeps living with her parents and needs constantly the support and love of them to move on.

Mike is an English teacher, without social life and bitter, but he accepts his job because he knows someone has to do it. Remak, finally, works in an enterprise dedicated to collect data and make future foresights.

All of them live in different neighbourhoods of NY and they have different lifes but something else than the chance has made they are together. They don't have the same stylelife than the rest of people. They aren't controlled by the technology, from what this one will try dominate them or murder them, as a last choice.

Suddenly, they are kidnapped and sended in the middle of a mountain. They don't meet each other nor the place. This one will be the first step to meet each other, discover who lies and, the most important thing: get back their lifes.

It's a novel nothing foreseeable and makes you asking yourself until the last page if the characters have got win the bad guy or not. The characters are very well definited and we can know parts of their past, such as the secret fight of father's Mal against the cancer. It also makes us think about not all is lost as it seems. There is always an open possibility. Included the most absolute failure in the life can achieve a miracle.

I give it a 5 out of 5 because it loves me. I recommend all type of readers because it has nor scenes of sex neither violence.


3 comments:

Cherry said...

The cover would never trigger my book-buying radar, but I like the dystopian premise :)

Tales of Whimsy said...

Sounds like something I MUST read. Great review.

Laura Flanagan said...

It's like a LOST version but in the city ;)

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