REVIEW: Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari

Title: Ashes, Ashes
Author: Jo Treggiari
Format: hardcover,
Genre: YA, Dystopia
Source: review copy from publisher
Published: June 1, 2011 by Scholastic

A thrilling tale of adventure, romance, and one girl's unyielding courage through the darkest of nightmares.

Epidemics, floods, droughts--for sixteen-year-old Lucy, the end of the world came and went, taking 99% of the population with it. As the weather continues to rage out of control, and Sweepers clean the streets of plague victims, Lucy survives alone in the wilds of Central Park. But when she's rescued from a pack of hunting dogs by a mysterious boy named Aidan, she reluctantly realizes she can't continue on her own. She joins his band of survivors, yet, a new danger awaits her: the Sweepers are looking for her. There's something special about Lucy, and they will stop at nothing to have her.

Why I Read this Book: Dystopian novels seem to be the next big thing, especially for the young adult audience. I love this genre so I was very excited to read Ashes, Ashes. From the blurb, I got a sense that Lucy was going to be a bad ass heroine but from what I read of the book she was more just self-sufficient and strongly independent. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to grab me and this book was a DNF for me. I got 117 pages into Ashes, Ashes before calling quits.  

What I Liked: I liked the premise of Ashes, Ashes but unfortunately, I couldn’t get into the book. I am glad that the story was told in 3rd person narrative instead of 1st person. I find with 1st person POV there’s usually a lot of inner thinking and too much over analyzing.

What I Didn’t Like: The circumstances surrounding Lucy’s family weren’t all that clear. I’m pretty sure I know what happened to them but I didn’t understand the why or how behind it. I feel that Lucy’s family situation should have been explained in the very beginning and in a clear way. Instead what I got was bits and pieces of Lucy’s family which was confusing.

The first chapter didn’t interest me at all. In a sense, Ashes, Ashes reminded me of the movies Castaway and I Am Legend; you have one character throughout majority of the story and it’s up to that one actor to win the audience over with emotion and interest. I didn’t get that with Ashes, Ashes. Lucy is very independent and thus very lonely. There’s not much dialogue (not even any self conversations like you saw with Tom Hanks’ and Will Smith’s characters). The descriptions of the book’s setting and of Lucy’s surroundings felt bland and lacked interest. I know it’s different with movies than it is with books; with movies there are things going on visually to stimulate the mind whereas with a book, this book in particular, it felt like there was a lot of filler with mundane things going on. Most of what I read was paragraph after paragraph describing conditions; her house, Lucy herself, her day to day activities. It just didn’t grab my attention.

Finally there was something interesting going on in Chapter 2 – Aidan’s character is introduced. But it didn’t last because Aidan’s gone by Chapter 3 and we’re back to lonely independent Lucy. There seemed to be more interesting things going on with Aidan’s character….it probably would have been a more interesting read for me if the book was told from his prospective.

Overall Impression: I had no emotional connection with Lucy’s character and I couldn’t connect with the story. I guess I’m not cut out for books that focus on one lone character for an extended length of time. I need more dialogue and activity going on between characters. Sadly, Ashes, Ashes was not the book for me. It lacked the strong heroine and riveting world building that both Divergent (my review) and Enclave (my review) delivered with ease, which I loved.

 

The Book Vixen’s Rating:

DNF