Review: Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Pub Date: June 5, 2012

Format: Book

Source: Library

Genre: Dystopian, Young Adult

"Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.

In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart." (Goodreads)

3.9/ 4 Stars.

Teenagers and small children locked in something that's the equivalent of a Walmart as the world ends around them. If that's not the makings of a good story I'm not sure what is.

Having just finished this book, it's kind of similar to the Maze Runner (Minho I love you!!). The children are forced to do whatever they have to, to survive. They elect someone as the leader, and that leader provides tasks to the other occupants with the hopes that things run as smoothly as possible.

I like this book because I think there is a very well though out foundation for the rest of the story. The environment is in, what looks like mortal peril, and there were chemicals released into the air that will either drive you insane, or just flat out kill you. Poor kids.

Snaps to having actual children in the book. It reminds me or Michael Grants Gone, a situation that was already almost impossible to deal with, becomes that's much more complicated when there are six year old's to look after. I think it gives the book a realistic feel.

My only qualms about the book were some of the language choices. I feel we just missed the mark when it came to the dialect of the teens. I can't give you specifics, but something was just... off. I'd be mid page, and someone would say something, and I would think, "that doesn't sound right." It wasn't the biggest deal in the world, but alas, there it was.

I also found myself annoyed with Dean, maybe it's because I'm so tired of guys liking these pretty popular girls for superficial reasons, but it's cool because we made up for it with Niko's crush on Josie. Adorbs. I though the teens were portrayed very accurately. I work in a library on the youth floor, I spend my afternoons listening to teens talking to each other about anything and everything. Laybourne did a pretty good job creating these different personalities as frustrating as they were sometimes.

I liked the book, I'm going to read the second one, and I get the feeling my ratings of the book will increase as I read farther into the series.