Review by greenlivingaudioworm - Away

greenlivingaudioworm 's review for:

Away by Megan E. Freeman

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

How much attention should we pay to rumors? How do we know what's a solid lead? Which theories should we investigate?

Or maybe the story is the rumors: how people invent information in the absence of facts. That could be an interesting theme.

Bottom line: Are we telling a story about the evacuations? Or are we trying to discover the cause of the imminent threat?

Away is a companion to the breakout novel-in-verse, Alone, by Megan E. Freeman. The biggest complaint I've heard about that book is: What happened? Why did everyone disappear? Well, after many years, we finally have our answer. This book easily falls in the realm of dystopian, making this a closer to home story than many of the dystopian novels that have dominated middle grade and young adult lit in the last several years. I can see why many adults aren't a fan of this book (pacing, believability) but the truth is, the book isn't written for us. It's written for younger readers who will blindly accept the unlikelihood of the events of this book and trust that young people can, in fact, change the world.

Things I Liked:

I really liked the different perspectives this book took on. We follow four distinct voices:
1. Grandin, a farmboy who wonders what happened to his dad when he disappeared on evacuation day.
2. Ashanti, a driven girl who wants to one day become a doctor, loves Greek mythology, and was friends with Maddie, the protagonist from Alone
3. Teddy, an aspiring film maker, who sees everything through a camera lens
4. Harmony, a journalist who wants to do nothing more than tell the truth through writing
It helped that each of these characters was very unique but also that each of their perspectives was written differently. While I listened to this book and experienced a full cast, I also think readers will be able to differentiate between the characters based on the mixed-media format of this novel.
I was convinced aliens had something to do with the forced evacuations. Why? No idea. There was absolutely nothing to make me think that but nevertheless, I was convinced. I'm both thrilled and terrified that the real reason had nothing to do with aliens (it was a long shot, anyway) because the real reason hit that much closer to home.
I liked the little nods to Maddie, from Alone. I do wish we could have seen what happened to her after the events of that book.
I loved Popcorn and Pax. What great little secondary characters.
These kids are innovative, resilient, and resourceful. Let's pass some of those characteristics on to our real life kiddos because goodness knows they need something to motivate them.

Things That Didn't Work for Me:

I hate epilogues that are set so far in the future and skip right over any challenges making it seem that once the book's very conflict is resolved, everything works out perfectly. How did this book end? This way. Hated it.
I think the readers of this book and Alone deserve to know what happens next. How do these communities rebuild? What does that look like? While this certainly isn't required, I know I want to know and I think enough young readers have grown attached to this world they would also appreciate knowing what comes immediately after the events of this book.
As an adult reader, I saw some major flaws in how people were being diverted from their homes. Surely people in other states or family at least would be wondering why they can't contact their family members for several years? With no technology and apparently no snail mail, it seems these people were truly wiped from the face of the earth one day and no one knew what happened. Young readers, who this book is for, aren't going to think through the logistics of all of this, so for the purpose of this novel, I was able to suspend disbelief for some of those more adult questions and allow the book to just be the way it was written.

Content Warnings