The Girl With All the Gifts / M.R. Carey / 407 pgs.

By far, this is the best book I've read this year. I think it outshines all of the books I read in 2015 too. I went into this unsure exactly what the book is about, but within the first couple of chapters, the big reveal occurs. Nonetheless, I think I will keep the reveal a secret and do what I can to talk about the book without giving it away.


First off, this is a dystopia. The book takes place in the near future after a cataclysmic event occurred about twenty years before. It is about a 10-year old girl, Melanie, who lives in a cell and waits to be collected every day to be taken to school. The soldiers strap her to a wheelchair while Sgt. Parks keeps a gun trained on her. Despite this odd arrangement, Dr. Caldwell calls her a genius. Melanie loves one thing very much, her teacher, Miss Justineau. What Melanie, or anyone else, doesn't know is that she, Sgt. Parks, Dr. Caldwell, and Miss Justineau will all have to band together and run for their lives.


The story is so rich and the author did an amazing job with the scientific research that was needed to complete the book. The genre he wrote in has already been done to death, but he brought something very new and unique. Very highly recommend!