Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne

The year is 2024. Gas is low, so everyone is required to travel by public transportation. Electronics are run by a main corporation: National Connectivity. They control every single electronic and none have failed to work since the switch.

Until now.

Dean and his brother Alex were running late for their bus for school. But they should have missed it.

While they were in the bus, a severe hailstorm came - hail the size of basketballs. Fortunately, they were able to get to a secure location: a supermarket (think Walmart).

However, the bus drive that survived decided to go to the ER and see who survived and what was going on.

So that left 14 kids in the store, alone. Caroline, Henry, Ulysses, Max, Bastiste, Chloe, Sahalia, Alex, Josie, Dean, Astrid, Brayden, Jake, and Niko. That was all.

When the bus driver left, they decided that Jake would be in charge, though the jock wasn't a good leader in this crisis.

The kids went to the multimedia center after finding out that their electronics didn't work and found an "old" television that connected to CNN (our TV's now are considered "old").

There was a huge natural disaster that started with the volcano on La Palma in the Canary Islands errupting. It covered the whole western front of the island which set off a megatsunami.

When the megatsunami hit the eastern coast of the U.S., that also set off a severe weather condition including the Rocky area in Colorado where hail came down fiercly and triggered an 8.2 earthquake.

Then the chemical plant in Colorado Springs blew up, sending a toxic cloud 800 miles from the plant. The chemicals affect by blood type. O Type becomes rabid - killing everyone in sight. AB Type becomes paronoid; A Type gets blisters all over their body. B Type stays normal but they become sterile after being in the toxic air.

So the kids are trapped in the store. Thankfully they have enough provisions to last for over a year, hopefully waiting out the toxics in the air.

But people from outside are trying to get inside the building. The kids are keeping their territory under lock and key, but can they keep it safe forever? Read Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne to find out!

My Thoughts/Reflections
When I read the back of this novel, I was very intrigued and wanted to find out more. The idea of kids being locked inside a supermarket seemed so out of the ordinary that I thought I would like it.

And I did like it... for the most part. I think I would have liked it more if it were just high school kids and no little kids. The little kids, for the most part, annoyed me.

But then again, I think the little kids were more mature than most of the high schoolers, so I take that back.

I dunno. There was something missing from this book that made me love it.

I did like the idea of a natural disaster trigger other disasters all over the world. It's a possibility in the future which makes this book possible to see the future.

It was an interesting read, and I think it was very realistic if a group of kids were trapped inside of a super center. They would whine, complain, fight, cry, play excitedly with toys and eat all of the junk food.

Maybe that's why I didn't enjoy it - it was too kidish and not grown up. ...Dare I say I wanted it to be more my age?! 0_0

Anywho, there were some good parts to this novel and I really enjoyed the topic. I think readers who are interested in apocalypse and dystopian will really enjoy this.

Also, Dean is the narrator of this novel, so I think that guy readers will like it because it's not a girl complaining about being stuck with a bunch of kids, but rather what Dead was thinking through the 12 days being stuck in the supermarket.

This is the first novel in the series and the sequel, Monument 14: Sky on Fire, will be released sometime in 2014. If I happen to see it, I might read it but I'm not sure if I will go out of my way to get it.