Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne Review

Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne
(Monument 14, #1)
Release Date: June 5, 2012
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends; 294 pages
Rating:

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.

This book has been on my radar for quite some time; it's one of those books that I don't understand why I've never read it until now. I really enjoyed it and the cover is totally what first drew me to this book. I judge a book by it's cover, don't tell me you don't. Covers can be deceiving sometimes, though. Which is why we shouldn't but it happens. In this case, my judging the cover was totally fine because I liked this book.

What I liked most about this book is the fact that even though we have one main character, Dean and then there's essentially thirteen other supporting characters. They range in age from 5 to 17/18 year olds and so that just adds a completely different feel to this book. Most YA books I'm used to reading have only older characters with a younger sibling thrown in to the mix or something but this book is full of half younger kids and half older kids. Thrown together in the middle of a chaos with no adult supervision. Use your imagination on how that must be.

The age difference is also one of the things I loved most about this book. The youngest kids were absolutely precious. I'm serious when I say that when and if I have kids, I really truly hope they turn out like them. They adorable, fairly well behaved and just too precious not to love.

The fact that the outside world seems to ending and you have no idea what to do and suddenly the high school kids are now responsible for not just themselves but these little kids. To say these kids kept things together pretty well is an understatement. I don't think I could've handled things as well as these older kids did.

This was definitely an enjoyable read; I want to read the next book and find out what happens next. Especially with how it ended. I do believe that this is a series that really would connect with younger readers. I almost feel like this is one of those books that are borderline middle grade/young adult and I really feel like middle school boys would really enjoy it, as well as the girls. It's something that could appeal to kids of either sex and any age, really.