Gone by Michael Grant

4/5 Stars

Synopsis per goodreads:

The first in New York Times bestselling author Michael Grant's breathtaking dystopian, sci-fi saga, Gone is a page-turning thriller that invokes the classic The Lord of the Flies along with the horror of Stephen King.

In the blink of an eye, everyone disappears. Gone. Except for the young.

There are teens, but not one single adult. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.

Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day. It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your birthday, you disappear just like everyone else...

Michael Grant's Gone as been praised for its compelling storytelling, multidimensional characters, and multiple points of view.

Lots of people posted that they were interested in my opinion on this, so I figured let's feed the masses!  so here it is, for what it's worth, because it took me a few days to figure out what to write, and even now im not sure.  So...here goes:

Ok, so yeah, I can see the reference to The Lord of the Flies, in a way that kids go nuts without supervision, but im not sure of the Stephen King part, unless we're talking about The Langoliers.  The book was good, not absolutely AMAZING! but good, I could put it down, or keep on reading, give or take.  It didn't hook me and enthrall me from word to word, and honestly I was aggravated at it, only because I can't remember my life when I was 14 years old, but I'm pretty sure that I would have thought to ration food, and plant something to eat later, rather than start beating people up, but that is just me.  And it got wierd, as far as mutants and flying snakes and 14 year olds were just taking it in stride.  Maybe I'm niave too, but I didn't know what a "wetback" was until I was way older than 12-13.  but you had kids flinging insults around like that.

Another thing that I found a lot of, was religion, there were so many references to religion, and children praying to be forgiven for their sins right before the "poof" happens, that I had to get online one day and actually check to see if this wasn't a "Left Behind" type thing with religion as the subliminal focus.  It doesn't seem to be but there seems to be a lot of it, plus we can't forget the evil/good parallel.

All that aside, it was an extremely interesting book, I was dying to know what was going to happen, if someone was going to get wise and plant a garden, or something.  I'm going to read Hunger (book 2) and continue on with it, because I just HAVE to know how it ends.