Hey everyone! I'm so psyched to be here today to tell you about Starters, one of our great Apocalypsies debuts by Lissa Price (with whom I share the uber-fabulous Wendy Loggia, Random House editor extraordinaire!). When Lissa told me she was express-mailing me an ARC of Starters, I was beside myself. The premise sounded awesome, and I had just had my wisdom teeth out that morning, so I needed something un-put-downable to read while icing my face and drinking milkshakes on the couch.
And let me tell you, Starters did NOT disappoint.
Set in an unnamed future where germ warfare has wiped out everyone between the ages of 20-60 (yeah, when the CDC says they're only vaccinating children and the elderly? Uh, this is the consequence. Yikes.) Children, aka Starters, or "unclaimed minors" without elderly relatives, are on the run. Thanks to laws keeping them from work, they're forced to hide out all over the city, hoping not to be picked up by the Marshals. But now there's a new game in town, Prime Destinations, looking to make the Starters rich by paying them to rent out their bodies to Enders, or the elderly who want to have some fun in a bangin' young bod.
Enter Callie, who has lost her parents and is forced to keep her young brother alive with only her wits. Oh, and she has wits. Callie is smart and resourceful, but with Tyler getting sick and the marshals closing in, she decides maybe it's time to cash in at Prime Destinations. Only this isn't your standard rental. Something has gone wrong. Very wrong.
Starters is a unique dystopian set in a world I can totally see coming to pass (and that scares the hell out of me). There are some definite technological upgrades, but for the most part it mirrors the society we have now, with people in power clinging to it at all costs and everyone else just struggling to survive. And the premise? It's totally unique, completely creep-tastic, and so thrilling you won't be able to put it down. You'll burn through it until you reach the last terrifying, cliff-hanging chapter, and when you close the book you'll immediately mark your calendar for the sequel, Enders, out at the end of the year.
If you're looking for a totally thrilling sci-fi/dystopian that you can burn through in a single sitting, Starters is it. Hey, I don't even usually like sci-fi, and I was ignoring my husband and skipping the painkillers just to get to the end.
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Lauren Morrill lives in Cambridge, MA, where she writes YA novels, plays roller derby, and tries not to freeze to death in the winter. Her debut YA novel, Meant to Be, releases on November 13, 2012 from Delacorte.
