Emptyby Suzanne Weyn
Published by: Scholastic Press
Released: October 1st 2010
Hardback
183 Pages
Rating: 4/5
Shall I say, a very perceptive take at the way the world could possibly end up in future years? Empty is a story about young teens and their survival during times of struggle with ridiculous prices of gas and other goods do to shortage of oil. Can you even imagine paying twenty dollars a gallon? What about seventy?
Things are tough in Sage Valley for Tom and his friends, but it's about to get worse. When fuel stops being delivered to the gas stations because it has to be sent overseas to help with the war, it starts effecting them in ways they never imagined. Tom and his family were already struggling, dealing with power outages, now this? To top it off, it gets rough when the trucks that make the deliveries to all the shops in town can't make it all because they are short on gas as well. Luckily, Tom's friend Gwen has a brother who somehow has connections and can get him some gas. It might not be much, but hey, it's something right?!
Things get from bad to worse when Tom finds out that the house behind him is on fire. The house that belongs to Gwen. Due to all of the illegal storing of gas that her brother did, it caught the house on fire. Even more awful is that both kids are under age and their mother ran off with her last boyfriend so now they have nowhere to go, and refuse to go into state custody. Gwen hauls off and heads up into the old mines to take cover. Good thing too, because a bad hurricane is coming in.
What Gwen finds can help them all, but selfishness ends up getting in the way for so many. This book really opens up your eyes to how wasteful one might be and how greedy and rude people are. I can't imagine living like this, but sometimes you don't have a choice. With the way the economy has been the past few years, who knows? If we all come together, we can make things easier, help each other out. Love, not hate. So many want to fight when it comes to the end. It doesn't have to be that way.
Received from Vivien for trade.
This sounds pretty interesting, and like you said, with how the economy is, not too far off from what could realistically happen. Wonderful review. I had not heard of this book before now.
ReplyDeleteWOW, this sounds so freaking awesome! I have read a very similar book (and quite a realistic one, too) called Water Wars - only in this book water was the hot item! If you enjoyed Empty, you might enjoy Water Wars as well :)
ReplyDeleteI am very interested to read this one, too. Thanks for you great review, hun! I will be adding this to my TBR pile :)
The cover of this book is super cool even though it makes me sad because it reminds me of how my gas gauge usually looks. And the story line has piqued my interest too! I'm really interested to see how the author thinks dwindling gasoline and sky high prices will affect us, and even more so, I'm interested to see how the author will make this "current event" appealing to young adults!
ReplyDelete- Jackie