Prepped

December 15, 2020
A teen raised in a doomsday community prepares to leave. While other kids were hanging out, going on field trips, and thinking about prom, Becca Aldaine was being taught to live in a bunker and receiving training in survival skills such as fly-fishing, lock-picking, firefighting, and handling medical emergencies--along with the occasional, all-too-realistic disaster drill. Becca comes from one of the original families in a community of doomsday preppers waiting and training for the end of the world. With college just months away, the high school senior has to hold out only a little bit longer before she can cut ties with the small-town Ohio group. When an accident occurs and Becca's plans for leaving start to seem out of reach, she finds an unexpected ally in Roy Kang, the boy whom she's been pretending to date for the last 5 years to appease her father. It turns out Roy is not in fact a mindless follower, and the two like-minded teens might just have found confidants in one another. Eventful and quip-filled, this doomsday read veers a bit light on character development but is high on emotion. Debut author Mangle explores her characters' struggles around parental expectations and identity--all while living with the pressure and trauma of community brainwashing. Most characters are presumably White; Roy and his family are Korean American. It's not the end of the world, but it's high drama nonetheless. (Fiction. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from January 1, 2021

Gr 9 Up-Mangle's debut provides an eye-opening, gut-wrenching look into the world of survivalists. All 17-year-old Becca Aldaine wants to do is graduate, leave home, and never look back, once she secures a full-ride scholarship. As she waits for news from Carnegie Mellon, Becca dreams of fleeing her insular community, where intense, dangerous survivalist drills and detailed, mind-numbing bunker inventory are the norm-not prom or parties. But when a tragedy befalls Becca's family, all her plans are thrown into chaos, as she must now worry about leaving her 10-year-old sister Katie behind with an increasingly unmoored mother. As her arranged relationship with her boyfriend Roy-from a neighboring prepper family-begins to change, Becca must weigh what means most to her. Mangle's evocative prose creates a vivid world where readers will wince at Becca's emotionally abusive family life and wonder at her innate steeliness and ability to survive. The well-drawn characters are three-dimensional, particularly Becca and Roy, whose Korean background is folded well into the narrative. The ending is exquisitely plotted down to the second and closes the story perfectly. Becca's ethnicity isn't stated. VERDICT Fans of compelling realistic fiction like that of Courtney Summers will love Becca's journey as they cheer for her to succeed against incredible odds.-Elissa Bongiorno, Washington, DC

Copyright 2021 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.