Dry
"The authors do not hold back." --Booklist (starred review)
"The palpable desperation that pervades the plot...feels true, giving it a chilling air of inevitability." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The Shustermans challenge readers." --School Library Journal (starred review)
"No one does doom like Neal Shusterman." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harrowing story of survival from New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman. The drought--or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it--has been going on for a while now. Everyone's lives have become an endless list of don'ts: don't water the lawn, don't fill up your pool, don't take long showers. Until the taps run dry. Suddenly, Alyssa's quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don't return and her life--and the life of her brother--is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she's going to survive.
"The palpable desperation that pervades the plot...feels true, giving it a chilling air of inevitability." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The Shustermans challenge readers." --School Library Journal (starred review)
"No one does doom like Neal Shusterman." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harrowing story of survival from New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman. The drought--or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it--has been going on for a while now. Everyone's lives have become an endless list of don'ts: don't water the lawn, don't fill up your pool, don't take long showers. Until the taps run dry. Suddenly, Alyssa's quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don't return and her life--and the life of her brother--is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she's going to survive.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
This book was terrifying in its plausibility, in its utter possibility of becoming a reality. Having had my own experiences with droughts, I didn't have to work very hard to imagine this happening. That's not to say the authors didn't do a fantastic job of bringing the fear, desperation, and hopelessness to the pages, but I can imagine this happening.
And they don't go all out and dry up the entire country's water supply, just one portion of one state. But to them, the rest of the world - and their water - might as well be in another galaxy. Just leave and go to the water? Yea, okay. But so are the thousands and millions of other people caught up in this disaster. There's going to be stragglers, there's going to be those who get trampled in the mob, there's going to be those that can't keep up and get there too late.
And imagine the outrage and the isolation you'd feel when you realize the media can't even give this life threatening crisis the attention it deserves....after all, there's nothing to show in a drought. Not when hurricanes are tearing buildings apart on the opposite coast.
Then when the water's all gone and you're dying of thirst, just how far would you go to get even just a sip of water? What would you start seeing as a source of precious hydration? Really think on that, go farther than you think anyone could possibly go for even a drop of moisture, because I can guarantee you someone, somewhere, thought it during the course of this book's Tapout. And this book will show you that, and it will turn your stomach. Because we can't imagine ever wanting...no, needing, water that desperately.
The characters in this books are teenagers, and I found them to be a bit typical for YA...then again, maybe not. I tend to be a bit harsh on literary teens as I often find that authors tend to create them to be sarcastic, philosophical, scoff-at-all-the-adults know-it-alls. But thinking back to my own teens, maybe that's not too far off...at least in how they see themselves.
The teens in this book did some really stupid things that got them in so much trouble. But I get it. They're kids trying to survive and avoid the water zombies (love this term), or turning into one themselves. They're going to panic, or act out of desperation or pure selfishness, and there's going to be consequences. So no complaints in that area really.
I think this book did a fantastic job of exploring a very grim, and entirely possible, scenario. The narrators were fantastic. The strong language, however, was a turn off for me and kept this book from being a 5 star.
And they don't go all out and dry up the entire country's water supply, just one portion of one state. But to them, the rest of the world - and their water - might as well be in another galaxy. Just leave and go to the water? Yea, okay. But so are the thousands and millions of other people caught up in this disaster. There's going to be stragglers, there's going to be those who get trampled in the mob, there's going to be those that can't keep up and get there too late.
And imagine the outrage and the isolation you'd feel when you realize the media can't even give this life threatening crisis the attention it deserves....after all, there's nothing to show in a drought. Not when hurricanes are tearing buildings apart on the opposite coast.
âThere's no radar image for a water crisis. No storm surges, no debris fields - the Tap-Out is as silent as cancer. There's nothing to see, and so the news is treating it like a sidebar.â
Then when the water's all gone and you're dying of thirst, just how far would you go to get even just a sip of water? What would you start seeing as a source of precious hydration? Really think on that, go farther than you think anyone could possibly go for even a drop of moisture, because I can guarantee you someone, somewhere, thought it during the course of this book's Tapout. And this book will show you that, and it will turn your stomach. Because we can't imagine ever wanting...no, needing, water that desperately.
The characters in this books are teenagers, and I found them to be a bit typical for YA...then again, maybe not. I tend to be a bit harsh on literary teens as I often find that authors tend to create them to be sarcastic, philosophical, scoff-at-all-the-adults know-it-alls. But thinking back to my own teens, maybe that's not too far off...at least in how they see themselves.
The teens in this book did some really stupid things that got them in so much trouble. But I get it. They're kids trying to survive and avoid the water zombies (love this term), or turning into one themselves. They're going to panic, or act out of desperation or pure selfishness, and there's going to be consequences. So no complaints in that area really.
I think this book did a fantastic job of exploring a very grim, and entirely possible, scenario. The narrators were fantastic. The strong language, however, was a turn off for me and kept this book from being a 5 star.
Gut geschrieben und behandelt ein sehr aktuelles Thema. Leider ist solch ein Szenario durchaus möglich in unsere Zeit 🙈 Auch verrückt zu erfahren wozu man alles Wasser braucht oder wo man es finden kann, ist einem gar nicht so bewusst im Alltag. Die Auflösung der Geschichte war mir zu sehr happy end.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.