Thursday, February 11, 2016

What I'm Reading: Undertow by Michael Buckley

YA Book Review: Undertow by Michael Buckley


My latest read was Undertow by Michael Buckley. This young-adult distopian adventure reminded me of my own book, Tales of a Redheaded Sea-Witch, in the sense that it revolves around sea-creatures.



Undertow follows the story of Lyric Walker, who lives on a Coney Island in a future where a bunch of sea-creature refugees have moved onto the beach. This book was very well written, and very action-adventurey, as I'm pretty sure everyone has come to expect from a teen distopian novel. Now, what I loved about this book was the writing, the pacing, and the friendship between Lyric and Bex, I thought that was marvellously done. What I didn't like, was the all the despair.

This is a distopian world where everyone seems to hate the refugees. There seems to be very little sympathy, understanding, or even curiosity about the new arrivals. Everyone just wants them gone. This got me a little down, because I don't want to think that humans are like this. I would like to think that if a bunch of sea-creatures suddenly walked out of the ocean that people would try to make friends with them. I'm that kind of person.

The other thing I really wanted this book to have that it didn't was pictures. The creatures in this book were just out there, in terms of description, and at times I was confused about what creature looks like what, as the majority of them don't look particularly human. Plus, I just love books with pictures. (Miss. Peregrine's anyone?)

Still, even with the despair and hatred and violence, which there was a lot of in this book, it was a good, solid read. I'm not obsessed with it, but I really liked it, and I will read the next book.

4/5 Stars.


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J. E. Hunter is the author of the Black Depths Series. Tales of a Redheaded Sea-Witch, and Black Depths, the first two books of the series can be found on AmazonKoboiBooksBarnes and Noble, and Smashwords. The third book, Dark Shores, will be release March 28th, 2016. The fourth and last book of the Black Depths series will be release by the end of 2016.

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