A review by mommasaystoread
Trashlands by Alison Stine

4.0

I don't mind admitting that Trashlands took me by surprise. I tend to avoid futuristic, doomsday-type stories because all too often, they either go completely off the rails or they depress the daylights out of me. But the blurb sounded different than what I'd seen, and the premise intrigued me. This one certainly gets a bit dark, and Coral has her share of problems, but there's an underlying sense of hope, the feeling that all is not yet lost throughout the book. The story is told from multiple points of view and the timeline jumps back and forth, both of which were much less jarring than I would've expected. The pacing feels almost lazy, for lack of a better description. It's not too slow, but it kind of wanders. Much like the genre, that's another element I don't usually care for, but it just works with these characters and their story. And that leads me to the author and her gift for storytelling. For whatever reason, the pacing, the jumping from past to present and back again, the multiple points of view, it all worked when Alison Stine put them together. This is a story well worth reading, and I'll be interested to see what the author does next.