The Farm

Title: The Farm

Author: Emily McKay

Publisher: Berkley Books (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 420

Synopsis: Lily can still remember the Before.  Not so long ago, there were no raging, bloodthirsty creatures that used to be human, until a virus turned them into the Ticks.  Teens weren't kept on Farms to serve as blood donors, keeping the Ticks fed and pacified.  And Mel, her autistic twin sister, wasn't communicating only in cryptic phrases of nursery rhymes.  But that was all Before, and now, Lily can only think about how she can get herself and her sister off the Farm and across the desolate United States to the safety of Canada.  The night she plans to escape, however, she runs into Carter, a classmate from the Before who seems to have all the answers.  With so much at stake, can she really afford to trust him?  Or, perhaps more importantly, can she really afford not to?

My Rating: 3 Stars

 
My Opinion: I just don't know what to make of this one.  It seems to be good conceptually, but there were a few wrenches in the works that made it less than a favorite.  I love the idea of the Ticks, and the Farms are suitably grim and dystopian, but there are a couple fantastical twists thrown into the plot that I had a hard time swallowing in McKay's scientifically based world.  I liked the struggle Lily faced in trying to care for her sister in a whole new world, but I found most of the other characters one-dimensional and hard to believe.  There's a lot of dystopian lit for young adults hitting the market right now, particularly with the popularity of books like The Hunger Games and Divergent trilogies.  Some of it is good, and others not so much.  I would recommend many other books over this one.