YA Review: Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman

Title: Dry

Author: Neal and Jarrod Shusterman

Year published: 2024

Category: Young Adult fiction

Pages: 400 pages

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Location: (my 2024 Google Reading map): USA (CA)

Summary: When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harrowing story of survival from New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman.

The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers.

Until the taps run dry.

Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life—and the life of her brother—is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.

Review: I've been meaning to read this book for years. I live in California and we are always so careful with our water usage: don't water the lawn, remove the lawn and put in native plants, don't run the water while you brush your teeth, and when things get really bad, turn off the shower while you shampoo or soap up. It's ingrained me to conserve, conserve, conserve.

So a book about California when the water gets turned off? Written by Neal Shusterman? Absolutely. I have like every Shusterman book that I have read (links are to my reviews): The Unwind series (Unwind, Unwholy, Unsouled, Undivided) and the Scythe series (Scythe, The Gleanings, The Toll, Thunderhead), and Bruiser.

I like the alternating narrators in this novel, giving us different perspectives of the disaster and possible solutions. I like that each of them is faced with behaving in a way that they wouldn't normally do with some rising to the occasion and others falling to the lower depths. The Shustermans show the depravity, the panic, the mob mentality, but also the good samaritans, those who are savvy in time of need, and those who bring people together. They have captured humanity.

Challenges for which this counts: none