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What an amazing book! I love the way Neal Shusterman always takes a what-if scenario and morphs it to freaky disaster proportions. In this case, he and co-author Jared Shusterman have got a not-too-improbable scenario where southern California is having a drought, and FEMA decides to prefer one disaster over another while leaving some citizens hung out to dry (gee, THAT hasn’t happened in recent history.) When the water in the taps gets shut off and suddenly all that’s left is what was in your house or on the store shelves the moment the taps ran dry, predictably, humankind turns into a pack of savages, or as Shusterman(s) call it—water zombies.

And really, this DOES have the feel of a zombie book, in an absolutely cool way. There is almost no humanity in the behavior we see portrayed in sickening detail, from stores, to mobs, to price gougers, to opportunists, to predatory. It is sickening, and the sad thing is, while you want to curl your lip in disgust and swear these creatures are beneath you, that you would never do something like this, the flip side of this coin is how realistically the authors paint their desperation. Is it any easier to stand by and do nothing while you watch your loved ones die before your eyes? How many of us wouldn’t pick up spears and turn feral if it was the only way to survive? A truly great Shusterman book.

Trigger Warnings: (view spoiler)[ violence, sexual assault (hide spoiler)]

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.