The Living Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00GYDQCOK | Format: PDF
The Living Description
Shy takes the summer job to make some money. A few months on a luxury cruise liner - how bad can it be? Bikinis, free food, maybe even a girl or two...there?s always going to be a fresh crop of passengers, after all. He?ll rake in the tips and be able to help his mom with the bills.
But then an earthquake more massive than any ever recorded hits California, and Shy?s life is changed forever. The earthquake is only the beginning. Twenty-four hours and a catastrophic chain of events later, Shy is lost at sea, fighting to survive - and stuck with her.
She?s blond and she?s rich, and never in her life would she have dreamed she?d be adrift in the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by death and completely dependent on a guy like Shy.
And Shy hasn?t even faced the worst yet.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 7 hours and 48 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Brilliance Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: November 27, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00GYDQCOK
Have you ever read one of those books that leave you scratching your head? The Living by Matt De La Pena did just that to me.
I selected this book after reading a blurb about it in a magazine. The blurb said a few things that immediately caught my interest: dystopia, pandemic, California Earthquake. It indicated that this was a new and exciting voice in dystopic fiction.
I bought it, and there are a few things you need to know:
First of all, this isn't dystopic…yet. There is a pandemic in the background. It doesn't become important to the story until the very end of the book. This is, instead, reminiscent of those slightly cheesy block buster disaster flicks you see on a certain science fiction network. (I described it to someone as largely a mix of Titanic and Life of Pi.)
The book is also extremely short for what I paid for it. I wouldn't have minded if the book didn't end abruptly. I think somewhere it's described as a cliffhanger. It's not. It's basically the end of a chapter and the book is over until the next one.
Now, I know it sounds a bit like I'm panning the book. I'm really not, but I think you should know what you're getting and what you're not.
Thinking of the book as a disaster book, it's fun, it's cheesy, it's thoroughly improbable, and I actually did enjoy it (once I stopped looking for it to be a dystopia!). You've got a terrific group of characters, some heartbreak, action and adventure, and yes…cheese. Now it is improbable. No spoilers here, but you are left scratching your head a lot. Why on earth did they do that? Wait a second…if they were going to do that to them, why bother with everything else they did?
I don't "review" books in general, but when I read one that is worth telling everyone about I'm happy to give a shout-out. "The Living" by Matt de la Pena is most definitely one of those books. It is probably worth mentioning that I am not the target audience for this book, and it is not the type of book I normally choose to read. Matt sold me on himself, as a person, first, and that intrigued me to read something he wrote.
I ran across Matt de la Pena for the first time at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference in Missouri a few weeks ago. He was one of the keynote speakers. I had a manuscript critique scheduled at the same time (with his editor, interestingly enough), so I missed the first half of the talk. When I came back into the conference room, the whole place was laughing and fully engaged. That's something unusual to find after the long morning they had already been through and right after lunch. It didn't take me long to figure out why they were so entertained. He was interesting to listen to and told his stories in a delightful and humorous way. I knew I would have to check out his books right away.
The first few books Matt has written are YA stories focused on inner-city and low income kids facing challenges in their own communities. I love the fact that those books are out there, but I wasn't sure how much I could connect with them--being near 50 and about as WASPy as one can get. But his new book, "The Living," stepped outside of that and put his characters in a world I could relate to. Some of the language and phrasing threw me off a bit at first, but I got used to it quickly and just got lost in the story. It's hard to say much of anything without giving away the fun of being shocked by events as they unfold.
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