Review | 'Ashes, Ashes'

Ashes, Ashes
Jo Treggiari
Scholastic Press
340 pg., U.S. hardcover
4 stars | A-



From Goodreads:

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.

I don't have very heavy feelings for/towards this book, so this review may be short and sweet. Emphasis on the 'may.'

Ashes, Ashes is a post-apocalyptic tale of a young girl named Lucy who is taken into a group of catastrophe-survivors as they try to escape the government-linked (sort of) Sweepers. Lucy meets Aidan, Sammy, Del, among others, and they fight to survive in a world full of natural competition smack in the heart of New York. 

I think the highlight of this book was the writing from Jo Treggiari. It was fast-paced (very much so), clean, crisp, and made it easy to relate to the story's protagonist, Lucy. This was a very different kind of dystopian novel, and I really appreciated the direction that the author went with it; the romance was not the center of the story, the journey the characters underwent was relatable, and the world was very fascinatingly built.

As far as the world-building goes, I feel like Treggiari spent too much time honing in on specific aspects, and not enough time describing and developing other areas, giving us information on the apocalyptic events, giving us information on the society and the government, etc.

The character development in this novel was pretty dull. I don't think any of the characters in this book really changed from start to finish. Lucy was kind of a bland, weird character whom I didn't really understand. Sure, it was easy to see inside her mind, but I never really got all of her motives. I kinda paid no mind to secondary characters, and pretty much lost track of who was who, except for Grammalie Rose, Aidan, and Del. 

The fact that this book wasn't the first in the series really irked me. I think the author left the ending unnecessarily open for a standalone. I didn't feel like there was a lot of closure with the story and the characters, and that closure was very vital and needed. 

Overall, I think the book was definitely fast-paced and delightful, but the crevices of the book became crumbly and unstable, which prevented it from getting that fifth star in my review.