It's YA, post-apocalyptic, romance, with zombies, and racism.
The world-building was good, the romance was a page-turner, and the character development was spot on. It was written very well. Still, I have a few bones to pick.
The racism threw me a little because you'd think in a struggling society that never has enough food or water, there would be more pressing matters than skin color. The village was suffering because of the segregation, and I kept waiting for someone to give a good reason on why their culture was like this, but it never came.
Has no one ever heard of a pulley? So here's the gist of the story: Fennel, the protagonist, is blind. For some reason, the Scourge (aka zombies) leave her alone. So when the Scourge comes to town, as they do periodically, Fennel has to go outside to fetch water for her people. She carries the water in oilskin sacks by either dragging it or putting it on a sled that she has to push.
Seriously, this is the best innovation humans can come up with? How about a pulley and rope? How about building a tree walk above the water hole with a pump and bucket system? Do you know long irrigating and plumbing have been around? How dumb is this?
There were too many Big Reveals. So yeah, there were secrets for Fennel to uncover. That's typical in any book. It was just a few too many life-changing secrets though, many of which she wasn't even curious about. One scene went like this:
Well, we're out in the woods alone so there's some things you should know. I will tell you three massive things in this paragraph alone that will make everything you know about life obsolete.
Noo!! It can't be! I will retch behind this tree from the revelations!
I was getting a little tired of the Big Reveals. You reach a point where the plot twists are no longer cliffhangers and become eye rolls.
Even so, the book was entertaining enough to recommend to others, and definitely worth a buck from Amazon.
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