Title: In a handful of dust.
Author: Mindy McGinnis.
Format: Audiobook.
Publisher: Katherine Tegen books.
Page count: 384 (9h 10min).
Release day: September 23rd 2014.
Genre: YA, dystopia, post apocalyptic.
Rating: 4 stars.
What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)
A dangerous disease strikes the community where teenage Lucy lives. When her adoptive mother, Lynn, takes Lucy away from their home and friends in order to protect her, Lucy struggles to figure out what home means. During their journey west to find a new life, the two face nature’s challenges, including hunger, mountains, and deserts.
My thoughts:
To be honest I was not expecting to like this book as much as I did. I was really pleasantly surprised by book one, but did not expect McGinnis to be able to surprise me again. But she did!
In this book we follow Lucy, who we got introduced to in book one but did not play a really big role, and we also read from her perspective. She is now ‘adopted’ by Lynn, the main character of book one. Something happens at their home and they decide to leave for California. And this was great!
I loved that we got to see way more of this ‘dangerous’ world, of which in book one there was only talk of. We finally got to see why this world was so dangerous.
They also met some people along the way, and I really like how they travelled with these people for a bit, and we got to learn a bit about their story. And thus more about the world. I also really liked that all these people were only shortly in this story, since in this way we got to learn more people.
Again I really enjoyed how harsh McGinnis was with some parts in the book. There were things in this book that were so disgusting, but then you have to do something to survive I guess?! But I really liked how she went full into this hard world, and did not close her eyes against the hard things!
I also really liked Lucy’s character! She was smart, but also took some dangerous risks which did not always end up right. In book one I did not feel a lot about Lynn, but I liked her better in this book. She made some hard decisions, which might have been for the best, or not. I also like how she does not only depend on herself, but trust Lucy to make some good decisions as well!
I still took a star, because there were some plot points I did not see coming from miles away, but there were also some really obvious points. For some of these as soon as a certain thing got introduced, you just already knew what was going to happen. But still this was a great book!
Just like for the audiobook of book one, I really liked the narrator!
I’m now definitely convinced that I need to read more from Mindy McGinnis!