Thursday, January 17, 2013

Survive by Alex Morel

I love survival stories but haven't read many of them written for teens. I've been reading a lot of young adult novels lately, many of them dystopian and many of them pretty mediocre, and I was so happy to finally read a completely different book that I can say that I really liked a lot. Jane is a smart, manipulative, troubled girl who is planning to kill herself in an airplane lavatory. She has been released from a mental health facility, purchased the pills she needs, and is ready to do it once and for all. But just as she is swallowing the pills the lights go out, the plane jerks, and Jane passes out. She wakes unharmed in the airplane lavatory only to find that the plane crashed in the snowy mountains and split into three pieces. She finds only one other survivor, and he is still buckled into his seat and perilously perched on a precipice. She must save Paul and together they must try to get to safety. At first their personalities clash but as they get to know each other they find that both of them are haunted by ghosts of the past. Their emotional journey is just as compelling as their physical journey. As I said, I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to high school students.