Monument 14 Review and Giveaway!

Author: Emmy Laybourne
Goodreads Rating: 3.75
Pages: 294
Format: Finished Copy

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.

Horray! Ive been promising this giveaway for a while, but I got so behind on my reviews that its taken me awhile to finally post it up. I really did enjoy Monument 14 because it wasn’t like a lot of the normal apocalypse books. This was the type of book that when you plan your end of the world scenario, this is the type of place that you wanted to be.

This books setting is in a type of WalMart where these kids are stuck from grades k-12. It really would be a nighmare senario because of having to have the teenagers take care of the little kids, which they sort of do not a bad job of. I wasn’t used to having a boy narrator, and it kidn of threw me because of the way that the book states where its more in second person than in first or third. For that reason I guess I read it sort of like a girl.

Other than that, I liked the explainations that Laybourne had for why there were these reactions in the air. I also loved that the main character, Dean wasn’t the typical hero who did everything but he wasn’t a pathetic leech who did nothing. I feel like too often in books there are no in between characters, just heros.

I really enjoyed the rest of the characters as well. I loved the crazy storys that Max would tell about his family and how Ulysees didn’t speak English. I did feel that the kindergartners were a little too smart, but I haven’t spent an awful lot of time with them to judge that accurately. I know it can be hard to twite the voice of a child because in a sense youre still in your own head, so your like “Of course they’ll know the word ‘inexplicable’ I know it!” when that is totally not the case. I felt that laybourne did an excilent job voicing the other kids.

All in all, I can’t wait to see what the next book is going to bring. From the cover that was recently revealed, I know that it looks like its going to be a crazy tale. If youre interested in reading Monument 14, you can check out my giveaway for a signed ARC or the Audiobook below!

The Courts Decision:

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