Showing posts with label Dystopian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dystopian. Show all posts

Tuesday 28 December 2021

Book Review: The Hush by Sara Foster

 The Hush
by
Sara Foster
 
Everything can change in a heartbeat
 
Publisher: Harper Collins
 
Publication date: 27th October 2021
 
Genre: Thriller / Dystopian
 
Pages: 359
 
Format read: Paperback
 
Source: Courtesy Better Reading Preview 

About the book
 
Six months ago, in an English hospital, a healthy baby wouldn’t take a breath at birth. Since then there have been more tragedies, and now the country is in turmoil. The government is clamping down on people’s freedoms. The prime minister has passed new laws granting authorities sweeping powers to monitor all citizens. And young pregnant women have started going missing.

As a midwife, Emma is determined to be there for those who need her. But when her seventeen-year-old daughter Lainey finds herself in trouble, this dangerous new world becomes very real, and both women face impossible choices. The one person who might help is Emma’s estranged mother Geraldine, but reaching out to her will put them all in jeopardy …

The Hush is a new breed of near-future thriller, an unflinching look at a society close to tipping point and a story for our times, highlighting the power of female friendship through a dynamic group of women determined to triumph against the odds
 
My review
  
Keep them meek and keep them scared.

Sara Foster’s The Hush, set seven years post Covid, is a dystopian novel that is highly believable in many aspects.
Smart watches are used to monitor a person’s health, every movement and purchase. Okay not so unlike present day Australia so far. It’s all for the citizens safety. So that’s okay?

When the still birth rate begins to dramatically rise new laws are introduced to monitor all pregnancies. Then pregnant teenaged girls start to go missing.
Anyone who posts or protests about these missing girls is dealt with severely and shut down immediately. The only right people have is ‘to obey’.

The Hush is so scarily real I raced through it. I was devastated at how helpless the people were and eager to see where Sara Foster was going with the plot.

Foster gives us a society where the very existence of human beings is threatened and a Government that is consumed with control and hidden agendas.

Friendship is an over-arching theme throughout the book, along with mother / daughter relationships. Women band together to help each other putting their own lives in danger.
I enjoyed the inclusion of the teenagers and how they united and were ready to protest about the way people were being treating. The way some of the teenagers got around the constant surveillance with the watches gave me a laugh. It was so believable.

I know the media had been shut down and threatened as well but I would have liked to have seen more of the spin the media put on the events.

I liked how the parts of the book were divided into the different stages of labour, very cute.
 
My rating 4 / 5
 
Challenges Entered: Australian Women Writers Challenge AWW2021
 
                                   Aussie Author Challenge #Aussieauthor21
 
About the author

Sara Foster is the author of six previous bestselling psychological suspense novels: You Don't Know Me, The Hidden Hours, All That Is Lost Between Us, Shallow Breath, Beneath the Shadows and Come Back to Me. Sara lives in Western Australia with her husband and two daughters, and is a doctoral candidate at Curtin University.

https://www.sarafoster.com.au/
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

Thursday 10 October 2019

Book Review: Rogue by A.J. Betts

Rogue
by
A.J. Betts

The thrilling sequel to HIVE

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Aus
Publication date: 25th June 2019
Series: The Vault #2
Genre: Science Fiction/Young Adult
Pages: 368
RRP: $16.99 AUD
Format read: B-Format uncorrected proof Paperback
Source: Courtesy of the publisher


 

Hayley has gone rogue.

She's left everything she's ever known - her friends, her bees, her whole world - all because her curiosity was too big to fit within the walls of the underwater home she was forced to flee.

But what is this new world she's come to? Has Hayley finally found somewhere she can belong?

Or will she have to keep running?

 
“I’d chosen out and this was it: hot-cold, dry-wet, bright-dark and lonely.”


Book 1 Hive ends with Hayley escaping her underwater world built with hexagonal rooms connecting like a bee hive.

In Rogue Hayley emerges into a new dystopian world. It is 2119, the ocean has risen cutting off small land masses turning them into islands. She comes ashore on a small island situated east of Tasmania, now called Terrafirma. Hayley is taken in by the caretakers of the island but a tragic accident forces them to leave the island placing them all in grave danger.

I loved this book even more than book1, Hive. Hayley’s wonder at the world around her is lusciously described and I could feel her awe at seeing a world that was bigger than the walls that had surrounded her all her life.

In a world with blood codes that can be traced Hayley’s unmarked blood becomes a precious commodity that is hunted down. Hayley wanders the land, sometimes finding the help of strangers, as she searches for a place where she can belong. Although she never forgets Will, the boy she left behind.

I rated Hive 15+ because of one graphic scene of a body being dismembered. However the writing in Rogue is simple and the storyline, although action packed, is not complex. Suited to age 10+ or younger mature readers.

“This world above the ocean isn’t perfect. What world is? It can be moody, savage and fearsome. It can be unsafe.
But it can be magnificent too. Surprising and wondrous.”

I’m looking forward to seeing what Betts comes up with next!

Read my review of Hive HERE


                        🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
 
My rating   5/5

This review is part of the Book Lover Book Review Aussie author challenge

book #33 in the Australian Women Writers challenge



A. J. Betts is an Australian author, speaker, teacher and cyclist, and has a PhD on the topic of wonder, in life and in reading. She has written four novels for young adults. Her third novel, Zac & Mia, won the 2012 Text Prize, the 2014 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award, and the 2014 Ethel Turner prize for young adults at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, was shortlisted for the 2014 Queensland Literary Award, and is available in 14 countries. It was adapted for American television by AwesomenessTV, and will soon be available globally. 
Her fourth novel, Hive, was shortlisted for the 2019 Indie Book Awards and 2019 ABIA Book of the Year for Older Children, and is a notable book in the Children's Book Council of Australia awards. A. J. is originally from Queensland but has lived in Fremantle since 2004.