REVIEW-SUGAR SCARS, by Travis Norwood

From Girls Heart Book Tours comes a new YA dystopian novel from Travis Norwood, Sugar Scars.

Please follow along with the tour and add your name to the rafflecopter below for a chance to win a paperback copy of this book.  My review is below….thx for being a part of this tour…enjoy!

Sugar Scars

By- Travis Norwood

Genre- Post Apocalyptic/Sci Fi

Living after the apocalypse really isn’t that hard for most of the survivors. The virus killed all but 1 in 10,000. The few remaining people are left in a world of virtually unlimited resources. Grocery stores overflowing with food and drink. Thousands of empty houses to pick from.

But one survivor, a nineteen-year-old girl, requires more than simple food, water and shelter. As a type 1 diabetic her body desperately needs insulin to stay alive. With civilization gone, no one manufactures it anymore. She hoards all the insulin she can find, but every day marches toward the end of her stash of vials. She has a choice. Accept her fate and death, or tackle the almost insurmountable task of extracting and refining the insulin herself.

Brilliant scientists struggled to make the first insulin. What hope does a high school dropout have?

  

My Review

So I began reading this book because the premise truly grabbed my attention and by the time I got through the sample I wanted more…immediately!  

This story is a unique way of looking at this kind of dystopian society.  Someone who needs their daily injection of insulin, period.  No evil society or social class that defines the good against the bad.  It truly began in a perfect way…I was totally hooked.  

Good character building, good visual, good storytelling…loved it coming from the pov of the girl writing her journal of the aftermath of the world killing virus.  Her analytical mind…her obsession with numbers, somewhat savant in nature..well, actually, definitely savant in nature.   Her powerful attitude, no wilting female, just someone taking care of business..who gets stronger and stronger as the story unfolds..  Her decisive moxy in the face of being one of a very few left on the planet and the implications of what that could mean to a young girl.

There were two instances in the story when I went..oh no, please don't go there…..and the author did anyway.  The first one was disturbing, but made real sense in the idea of what the world had become.   Seriously, without giving anything away, and if you read this book you'll see it coming…but what are the odds that a majority of the world is dead and is left with only lovely happy joyous giving people?  So, yes, some ugly shows up.   And like I said the first one, as much as it made me seriously wince, truly fit this story…however, the second, the SouthAmerican bit….way to out of context for this to be believable…and again…really?  This is where we had to go?  You're expecting me to believe this little person became this kind of woman?  But that is where we went and it was interesting none the less..and well written either way.  Sounding more like an action movie, and realizing this is written by a man, kinda made sense.

Now the ending….I have mixed feelings about this.  The initial direction the author leads us was oddly  satisfying to me…like, okay, lets make it this..let's make it not what we expect.  I actually enjoyed that and applauded him for going there…but then page by page it turned into something completely opposite and in as much as I had such a visceral reaction to what I thought was the ending and loved it…it still pulled out a very successful ending….a little schmaltzy, but satisfying none the less.  The last line in the book actually brought goose flesh to my arms, it was hope filled and better yet...it was good.

I wish the author had the nerve to go through with the first thought, but either way, as I said the last line made it all just perfect…one of the best books I've read in a while…and I've been reading quite a few this past summer.  Well done Travis!

About the Author-

Travis Norwood lives in Montgomery, Alabama with his wife and five children. Like Sugar, he would be perfectly happy living in a world emptied of almost all people. But not you, of course. He sincerely hopes you survive the apocalypse.

Links-

Website- http://travisnorwood.com/

Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/TravisNorwoodAuthor

Twitter- https://twitter.com/TravisLNorwood

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