A review by 4saradouglas
The Living by Matt de la Peña

3.0

This was a really weird book. I had a hard time getting into it and was about to give up on it completely when it finally hooked me. The beginning is a little like the beginning of the movie Titanic... It gets kind of long and you just want the ship to sink already. Once the action starts, though, wow! It never did let up. I told my husband that this book seemed like it was written by someone with ADHD. It had SO much going on. How many disasters can one novel hold?? I was disappointed to find that this wasn't a stand-alone book and you'd have to wait for the sequel to find out more, but it wasn't such a cliff-hanger that it made me mad either. It wrapped up pretty nicely and I feel pretty good about leaving it as it is. It wasn't good enough to pick up a sequel someday, but it was worth the read. I think a lot of my teens will enjoy it if I can just get them past the first 75 pages.