Ashes, Ashes
The main character, sixteen-year-old Lucy, has lived through the end of the world and is surviving on her own in the wild. She’s doing a pretty good job of it until she runs into a pack of hunting dogs. Luckily, super-cutie Aiden is there to haul her up into a tree and save her. He lives not too far away with a group of survivors. When Lucy is forced to leave her little home, she heads for the camp and more importantly, toward Aiden, who she is already crushing on after one meeting. After that, the sweepers show up and the adventure begins.
It all sounds pretty exciting, right? Problem is, it never really actually is exciting. Lucy and Aiden like each other, but the author doesn’t really give much reason for it. I’m sure someone probably thought adding a love story to the book would give it more appeal, but I felt like Lucy was much more interesting before she starts to think about Aiden all the time. I liked her as a loner. When you read about what she is doing to survive, it really makes you wonder what you could do in the same situation. Once she joins up with the other survivors, it almost feels like she is useless, even though she’s been living on her own for a year.
On his own, Aiden is an interesting character, a teen doing everything he can to help the group survive. While Lucy has learned to keep herself alive, he as learned to do what is best for the group and this is where they butt heads, until all of a sudden one or the other of them do something completely out of character without warning. This happened to both of them at least once, and left me scratching my head wondering why they had fought about it for so long.
Hearing the back story was probably the best part of the book, as Lucy explains how the world fell apart, what it meant for her family and what it meant for her. The ending was also good, some nice excitement as Lucy and the others try to escape from the sweepers. So it’s a book with a strong beginning and ending, but a center that drags.
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