Alone

 

Author: Megan E. Freeman

Narrator: Gail Shalan

Publisher: Simon Audio

Year: 2021

🎧𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄🎧

Thank you @simon.audio for the #giftedbook. 

Could you survive all by yourself in a deserted town without electricity or cell service? 

Alone, by debut author Megan E. Freeman, is a novel in verse about a girl who finds herself in a desperate situation. Maddie makes a plan with her two best friends for a secret sleepover at her grandparents unoccupied apartment. When her friends can’t make it, Maddie stays at her grandparents anyway. She wakes up the next morning to frantic voicemails from her parents and her small Colorado town deserted. She quickly turns on the tv to discover her town was evacuated due to an unnamed eminent threat and all the citizens have been relocated to…somewhere. Maddie quickly goes in search of her family and anyone else who could help her. She is the only one left and she’s cut off from everyone. Maddie must make a plan to survive, to find enough food and water to last until she is rescued, to survive the brutal Colorado winter. 

Maddie is smart and resourceful. She takes in her neighbor’s dog George so she has some companionship to ease her loneliness. She gets books from the library about survival. She makes mistakes, but she learns how to deal.  Kudos to the author for including Maddie getting her first period and how lonely it makes her without her mother there with her. Most novels don’t often address bodily functions but this little scene makes the character and her isolation real and it’s something teen girls can relate to. 

This is quick and engrossing read with short chapters. Narrator Gail Shalan does a superb job giving Maddie a voice full of strength, sadness, and wonder. Middle grade and teen readers will identify with Maddie’s loneliness and her determination to survive. This is perfect for fans of Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain, or the I Survived series. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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