Seventeen-year-old Mia Price is addicted. But not to alcohol, drugs, or any of the other usual suspects. Mia is addicted to lightning strikes. She’s been struck numerous times throughout her life, can feel storms coming on, and craves the rush of being struck. She even has the scars all over her body to prove it, ones she covers up with full body clothing and gloves. But the one storm Mia didn’t sense coming wasn’t related to lightning at all. It was an earthquake, the earthquake that destroyed Los Angeles, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Downtown L.A. was reduced to an area called the Waste, with collapsed skyscrapers and debris. And the beaches of Venice and Santa Monica were converted into Tentville, where the poor and homeless set up temporary living quarters and a man called Prophet established his home base. Prophet, who claims to have predicted the quake, has drawn many under his spell with his charismatic presence and vehement preaching about the end of days, repentence, and sin.
Struck by Jennifer Bosworth
In the aftermath of the quake, Mia and her brother Parker are responsible for taking care of their mother, who is suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder, and who is gradually falling deeper under Prophet’s spell. Mia trades for anti-anxiety meds on the black market, venturing into the slums and risking her life, and the siblings go back to school to obtain the rare food rations that they will receive there. It is on this first day of school that Mia’s life changes even more. She is soon caught between a group called the Seekers, who believe that Mia’s lightning scars signify something special, called the “Spark,” Jeremy, a strange boy who once tried to kill her but now claims to be saving her life, and Prophet’s followers. But when Mia discovers that Prophet’s message of the end of days, and another final storm, may just become reality, and that she is crucial to this vision, she has decide who to align herself with.
While I’m a bit burnt out on post-apocalyptic fiction, Struck was a compelling read that dealt with a unique concept –the end of days as brought upon by weather phenomenon, rather than corrupt ruling authorities. The idea of a girl being tied up with this extreme weather was an interesting addition, although I wish that Bosworth would have fleshed out Mia’s connection with lightning more. We learn about her backstory a bit, about how lightning affects her and the effects her ‘condition’ has had on other people in her life. Yet we never find out exactly why Mia is a human lightning rod. Is it something she was born with or something that affected her suddenly? And if it did only occur when she was first struck by lightning, why? A little clarification would have made her journey a bit more clear for me.
Another unique topic that this book tackles is that of extreme religion and the dangers of blindly following a religious leader. I rarely see books dealing with religion in YA lit, and Struck deals with the extreme limits of this subject matter, painting religion, and blind adherence to faith, as dangerous. This can be a risky move, as many readers may be religious and take Bosworth’s characters as a condemnation of their own beliefs. However, Prophet is sufficiently evil, and his actions so extreme, that Bosworth manages to condemn religious extremism rather than religion.
One personal quibble of mine is the Jeremy character. I am not a fan of the “protagonist being unexplainably attracted to the compelling boy” cliche, which I see used over and over in paranormal fiction. This instant attraction just seems like an easy out to me, a way for an author to establish a relationship without dealing with the experiences that actually establish a relationship in real-life. Relationship and character development took a back seat to world building in Struck.
However, despite these complaints, I still enjoyed Struck, and raced through it quite quickly. I always respect originality and taking chances in my books.
Disclosure: Review copy received from publisher.
Struck will be published on May 8, 2012.
Great review, Jen! This looks interesting and different in a lot of ways even if it has a few typical cliches. Might have to find it.