When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, she didn’t know her world was about to change. She knew about the disease sweeping through the country’s children–it was impossible to miss when kids kept dying. She didn’t know that surviving the disease was the worse outcome.
Surviving, it turns out, was another word for changing–waking up one day with abilities that used to be the impossible stuff of movies; waking up with strange powers that most of the kids, especially Ruby, can’t begin to understand. Or control.
Now sixteen, Ruby knows just how dangerous she is. She knows she’ll never be allowed to leave Thurmond, the government camp set up to “rehabilitate” other kids like her.
She also knows that she has to escape to survive.
On the run, desperate to get away, Ruby soon falls in with other kids looking for a sanctuary called East River. Ruby knows she can’t let anyone get close–not after what happened on her tenth birthday–but maybe they can all use each other to get to East River in one piece.
Life outside Thurmond isn’t what Ruby expected. Turns out, staying under the radar is hard when you’re dangerous. Ruby lost control of her life when she was ten years old. If she can learn more about her own abilities, she might be able to reclaim that control. But everything in life comes with a price. Especially freedom in The Darkest Minds (2012) by Alexandra Bracken.
The Darkest Minds is Bracken’s second novel. It is also the first in a trilogy.
This book was one of my most anticipated 2012 reads. I fell in love with Bracken’s debut novel Brightly Woven and ever since I could not wait to see what she released next.
Part road trip, part sci-fi adventure, part dystopian The Darkest Minds does not disappoint. With a plot that turns on a dime it is a guaranteed page-turner with an ending that will leave readers anxious for the next installment.
At the same time, The Darkest Minds is so much more than an action-packed read. Ruby’s story is heart-wrenching and horrifying but her resilience and her persistence are fierce to behold. The other characters in the story are vibrant and beautifully written–even at their most villainous.
Bracken has created a disturbing world with elements that are both fantastical and uncomfortably possible in our own world. Ruby’s voice throughout the novel is as smooth as honey filled with descriptions that bring the eerie Virginia landscape of the story vividly to life. The Darkest Minds is a stunning, sometimes harrowing, start to a series; confirming that Bracken is an author to watch.
Possible Pairings: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, White Cat by Holly Black, The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, False Memory by Dan Krokos, Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers, Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi, The Archived by Victoria Schwab, The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud, All These Things I’ve Done by Gabrielle Zevin
*This book was acquired for review from the publisher at BEA 2012
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