Struck, by Jennifer Bosworth
Rating: 3 out of 5
Summary: Mia Price is a human lightning rod, or so it seems. She cannot go out into a storm without getting struck, yet, somehow, she always manages to survive. Embarrassed by the scars that cover her body and scared that people will get hurt if they stand too close to her, Mia tries to keep to herself. Following an earthquake that devastated Los Angeles, and which some people claim was caused by lightning, Mia is finding it harder to stay in the shadows. Cult members from an evangelical church led by a man name Prophet are hunting Mia along with another group that is fighting against Prophet, known as the Seekers. And both groups keep telling Mia that the world is coming to an end and that its fate rests on her shoulders. To complicate matters, the mysterious, attractive boy Jeremy keeps urging Mia to stay away from both groups. As the End nears, Mia’s must decide – is fate written, or can it be changed.
Disclosure: I received an ARC of Struck from www.almostgrownup.net.
All in all, this was not a bad book, but I did not think it lived up to its potential. The premise is great – a girl who controls lightning, the end of the world, and secret cults. But once I got past the premise, the book fell short for me.
The biggest problem was that I didn’t really feel invested in the characters. I didn’t care if they lived or died. I didn’t want to see the world end, so I had to side with the people trying to save it, but otherwise, I didn’t have anything to root for.
I also found the plot to be a little overcomplicated. There were a lot of unanswered questions. The logistics of the powers didn’t really make sense to me. In Ashes, some of the characters seem to acquire special powers after an EMP, but the logic behind this is explained and seems plausible enough. I would have liked to have seen some sort of explanation about how the people who got their powers were chosen. Otherwise, it just seems a bit too random.
I thought I was going to have a bigger issue with the religious aspects of the book, but I thought Bosworth handled them nicely. So often in apocalypse books the religious elements become too intense and preachy, but Bosworth did not get preachy. Rather she showed us a cult that played on people’s’ fears. I’ve seen people turn to religion after traumatic events, so this seemed like a relevant addition and I thought Bosworth handled it with grace.
As an easy beach summer read, this book would work, but if you have a stack of things you are dying to read, I would probably recommend reading them first.
