Monument 14 (Monument 14 #1) by Emmy Laybourne

Release Date: June 5^th, 2012

Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.

Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.

But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.

Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.

In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.

Oh, wow.

What an alarming read!

Alarming as in realistic and brilliant. The mega-tsunami, the chaos that surrounds it, this almost reads like a news report than a YA targeted book. Natural disasters are very real, and very scary.

I live in Alberta, which is not a Province known for natural disasters, and this summer the Province was hit hard with flooding. This shocking experience opened up my eyes that yes, natural disasters can happen anywhere. No one is truly as safe as they believe.

I love apocalyptic stories because they really inspire you to think of every possible ‘what if’ for every situation. Some I admit, are much too far-fetched to be believable. I did not find this problem with Monument 14. The characters, the setting—everything, was believable. That is what made it such a good read, it was able to strike that emotional chord with me and make me think, what if this was me?

I loved how the pack of children banned together to survive. I know at some point, everyone has had that thought of how cool it would be to be stuck overnight in a store. These kids are literally trapped. The outside world is chaos and ruins, what is inside the walls of the super-mart become there home and their only place of comfort.

Yep, a super-mart is the ideal place to be trapped. I liked how the story was reminiscent of Lord of the Flies at times, with the children turning on eachother. It was a rich read that I read in one sitting. My only disappointment was the ending. But, it makes sense as it is serving as a segway to the next entry.

Very cool concept and great execution. At times I wished the vocabulary was more advanced, but then with the same thought I also thought it was appropriate for the target audience.

If you loved Divergent or The Hunger Games, you will love Monument 14!

Thank you, Raincoast Canada for the review copy.