Book Review: The Young World by Chris Weitz

The Young World
Author: Chris Weitz
Publisher: Hatchette Australia
Pages: 373 pages

Welcome to New York, a city ruled by teens.
After a mysterious Sickness wipes out the rest of the population, the young survivors assemble into tightly runtribes. Jefferson, the reluctant lesser of the Washington Square tribe, and Donna, the girl he's secretly in love with, have carved out a precarious existence within the chaos.

But when a fellow tribe member discovers a clue that may hold the cure for the Sickness, five teens set out on a lifealtering road trip, exchanging gunfire with enemy gangs, escaping cults and militias, and braving the wilds of the subway- all in order to save humankind.

My review
 Thoughts on the book: I had no idea that the author of The Young World, Chris Weitz was the writer and director of so many amazing films like American Pie and The Twilight Saga: New Moon and he has now delved into writing novels and let me tell you he is fantastic at it. The Young World is his first novel and tells the story of a post-apocalyptic New York where a Sickness has wiped out all of the young people and all of the adults, leaving only the teenagers to fend for themselves. Of course when we start the novel it is a while after the sickness has taken everyone and the novelty of being the only people left has worn off. Everyone is trying to survive the best that they can, which means most people have formed their own groups and are defending their territories anyway they can. But what if somewhere out there, there is a cure that can stop this sickness in its tracks and stop people from dying when they hit that certain age? Well Jefferson and his friends believe they may have found it and set off on a whirlwind adventure searching for this cure. 

The Young World is told from the POV of Jefferson and Donna, two members of the Washington Square tribe who have known each other for a long time, pre sickness included. Both offer very different views on what is happening around them which is not just because one is a boy and one is a girl. Both have very different characteristics, Jefferson wears his heart on his sleeve and is very approachable and is quite smart, Donna on the other hand is a bit of a bad ass, who isn't very forthcoming with her feelings and isn't very friendly, especially for a girl. But this dynamic duo make for some fantastic story telling and in having two POV we get to see a lot more of what is happening compared to if the book was written with only a single POV. 

The journey that this group of five members take to find the cure is one filled with great risk and means that they have to travel into enemy territory and may even have to leave some members of their group behind. It is an amazingly written adventure that I absolutely loved and I can't wait to see what happens in book 2. The Young World is perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner.

Rating: 5/5










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