Gone by Michael Grant

Summary: The Gone series is a series of YA supernatural dystopian novels. The plot follows the lives of everyone under the age of 15 in a small town called Perdido Beach where one day, everyone over the age of fifteen vanishes---and Perdido Beach is physically blocked off from the rest of the world by a dome (similar to Stephen King's book Under The Dome). The book follows main characters Sam and Astrid---and their friends and foes---as the kids of Perdido Beach try to survive without adults, electricity, much food or water, gang wars...and strange supernatural phenomenons that are transforming some of the kids. The kids call life under the dome the FAYZ, and here in the FAYZ, all the normal rules are banished.

My Review: I absolutely LOVE this series! It's like a dystopian tale...but set in modern times. Because once the FAYZ is created, the rest of the world ceases to exist---at least for the kids---and outrageous things start happening: gang wars, cannibalism, fighting, electing governments, rebellions, anarchy...and then there is the supernatural element as well, in where some kids are gaining powers. This series (which goes Gone, Hunger, Lies, Plague, and two new ones are coming out soon) is hard-edged and fast-moving. It's like an action movie; I could picture everything in my head the whole time. It seriously made my jaw drop at some parts. Grant does an awesome job making us ponder humanity and human nature in this book. As soon as I finished one book, I would race to get the next one---and I read each book in less than a day. Yes, they were THAT good. The books got a tad confusing at times, because there were SO many characters, and they could get a bit horrifying (advice: if you get queasy easily, don't eat food before you read these books), but in the end, this series should NOT be missed by anyone!

Covers: The covers are kind of blah. I think they could have done better---they're just the main characters. I feel like they could have done more to portray the kind of book that's inside; these covers didn't do a very good job.

Overall Grade: A-