Rating: WARTY!
This was an audio book I got from the library. It was just sitting there on the shelf looking like it could use some attention (we've all been there, don't try to deny it!), so I decided to pick it up and see if we got along okay, but it turned out this one was way too young for me and annoying as all helicopter.
The basic premise is a dystopian future Earth where climate change has got out of control (it's already heading there, so this is a good topic for a kids novel, but it wasn't handled well here). The problem with this is that the end result of climate change in what was obviously the US wasn't anything like you might imagine. (Apparently dystopia only affects the US, so if you live elsewhere, you need not worry at all!) This is a miserable world where people either live in bubble cities (domed domains, presumably), or they lived outside and scavenged whatever they can off the land. The problem is that there was no information available about why it had ended up this way, and why there were people on the in, and others on the out, or why those on the in had no time for those on the out. Maybe young readers won't wonder, but my kids would.
Nor does it explain why and how Maggie's family got a heads-up, and deliberately chose the great outdoors instead of going into a bubble city. The world building sucked and was highly improbable where it wasn't absurd, but the two biggest problems were the extremely annoying character named Toad who spoke gibberish and was nothing but a pain in the neck, and Maggie. After standing atop a Ford Falcon station wagon, and declaring her name is going to be Ford Falcon at the start of the story, she does nothing - not in the portion I listened to, to either earn or merit the name change. I got bored by just under the half-way mark, and quit listening. I can'r recommend it based on what I heard. On the contrary - I recommend you avoid it unless you're out of sleeping pills, then it might work a treat if it doesn't keep you awake through sheer irritation.
