Review: Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari

A thrilling tale of adventure, romance, and one girl's unyielding courage through the darkest of nightmares.

Epidemics, floods, droughts--for sixteen-year-old Lucy, the end of the world came and went, taking 99% of the population with it. As the weather continues to rage out of control, and Sweepers clean the streets of plague victims, Lucy survives alone in the wilds of Central Park. But when she's rescued from a pack of hunting dogs by a mysterious boy named Aidan, she reluctantly realizes she can't continue on her own. She joins his band of survivors, yet, a new danger awaits her: the Sweepers are looking for her. There's something special about Lucy, and they will stop at nothing to have her.

As with a few of the books I've read recently, I was really looking forward to this book. I wasn't very happy about the price of the kindle version though. £9.36 +_+ almost double the usual price, and a few pounds more than the physical copy. (Edit: the average price of ebooks has now gone up since I wrote this review, a lot of them are now £7+)

Although the price seemed extreme most of the reviews on Goodreads were really good, and even though I was still on my zombiefest I was looking forward to reading it. It was slow to get going, with lots of exposition and I found myself skim reading. Once it hit the halfway mark the info dumps petered out, and the story got going. Alice is surviving on her own as the story opens. I liked Alice's independence, the fact that at 16 years old and she survived on her own for over a year, this is thanks mainly to a survival book she had the savvy to pick up along the way. I liked Aiden but I felt that, as with Del and Sammy, he could have had a little more depth. All the face and hair touching was sweet but there needed to be more to him than the fact he liked Alice.

 The book felt like a start of a series, and it would be a good book to start one, and although it does stand up on its own as well it definitely felt like it could have been the beginning of something. I really hope there is a second book because I wasn't satisfied with the epilogue of Ashes, Ashes. Over all not a bed read at all

Rating: 4/6 - I Liked It