Review: Struck by Jennifer Bosworth

Book Description via Goodreads:

ARC,

May 8, 2012, Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR

Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.

Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.

Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.

Source: Netgalley (ebook), Ksenia, Macmillan (print ARC) (Thank you!!)

My Thoughts:

Struck is definitely one of a kind. There was no virus. There were no zombies. There was no killing spree. Struck was an honest to goodness new fresh take of the end of the world. Imagine being thrust into a world where there was a man who claimed himself to be the Prophet of God having a show on television three times a day that basically told you the world was going to end really soon and if you haven’t taken his word as the word of God, you’ll surely go to hell. Here’s the thing about Prophet. He predicted the time that the earthquake will hit Los Angeles a few moments before it happened. That was just freaky.

Mia Price was a not-so-ordinary girl. She was a lightning addict. I don’t think she was really masochistic – I just think that Mia, who has been struck by lightning over and over again, was accustomed to the pain. Mia was driven by her want to be one with something greater than her and this drove her to spread her hands up in the air and reach out to lightning. She was filled with panic, anger, disappointment and a strong sense of protectiveness for her brother and mother. She was also one of the most consistent and realistic characters I’ve ever met. I like how she stood her ground and kept the same opinion about the things around her. Being logical and realistic, she was not easily swayed. She knew her facts and she knew risk management. Plus, she could shoot red lightning bolts out of her hands and that’s pretty cool.

Jeremy was the Clark-Kent-glasses-wearing, blue-eyed handsome stranger in Mia’s life. He kept popping everywhere – at school and at home – in a semi-stalkerish manner but he has a reason to do so. Jeremy was hard to figure out. He was mysterious with his holding back and his gift. I knew he had tons of secrets and I was dying to know them all. But he was quite tight-lipped about them. On the other hand, he had this soft, sweet and tortured side. He had many faces and he kept me guessing about his true intentions. To other people, it might seem that Jeremy and Mia had instalove. But these two teens lived in the very problematic, depressing post-apocalyptic LA. If you knew the world was about to end in just a few days, would you hold back, would you let the chance of getting to know a person slip through your fingers? Sometimes love happens fast, especially if your life is chaotic.

One of the things that made Struck stand out for me was the religious theme. There were two sides: the believers and the seekers. The Followers of ‘Prophet’ wore all white. They were kind, gentle and helpful especially when they were recruiting people. But don’t worry, Struck was written in a non-preachy way. The Seekers, on the other hand, wore red cloaks and black masks. It sounds sinister, right? Both of them appeared to be cults – two opposing teams bent on recruiting as many people as they could on their sides. The tug-of-war of the two sides brought out the good and bad in them. I enjoyed reading about them even though they freaked me out a little. Mia was stuck in the middle of these two. She was the most wanted recruit but she didn’t want to be a part of either team. But could she really resist if her family would be dragged into the equation?

Struck is a well-written post-apocalyptic debut that burned with panic, desperation and chaos, ignited doubt and love, and zigzagged its way to my heart. I highly recommend this to dystopian and post-apocalyptic readers!

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