Above - Reviewed by Maggie Devero

Above by Isla Morley

Reviewed by Maggie Devero

Sixteen year old Blythe is going about her average business in the small town of Eudora, Kansas; arguing with her siblings, falling for a boy named Arlo, and enjoying the town's annual picnic and just growing up a regular teenage girl, with nothing out of the ordinary. That is until the town's librarian, Dobbs Hordin, kidnaps her the night of the Horse Thieves Picnic and hids her away from her normal world, preaching the End of all as we know it. He keeps her held captive in an abandoned missile silo in the vast fields of Kansas, where he has made his survivalist home of sorts, to wait out the end, and then repopulate the vacant world as the Remnant of humankind. Blythe struggles with the idea of no one coming to her rescue, and deals with failed attempts of escape; she is stuck and no one is going to save her. She fights off and eventually succumbs to some kind of insanity, accepting that this is where she will reside until she passes from this life, but it will never be a home. She deals with many traumatic events during her time down under, until miraculously she finds escape seventeen years later. But the world she returns to is so different than the one she had previously known, will she be able to return to life above ground? Was escape really worth it in the end?

I LOVED this book, it was just as good as I had expected it to be. Starting right in the midst of the drama from the very first line, and working its way through the storyline until the very end this book keeps you on your toes. Blythe's character grows, maybe not in the happiest or most positive way, but seeing how Morley writes her changing while stuck in this hidden silo is crazy because she sticks with the initial passion to escape, but eventually settles with the fact that this is her life now, and escape will not happen. Also seeing Dobbs go from Blythe's captor who won't lay a hand on her, to a crazed man who even through all this, might have loved her all along, is just so weird. Also all the different means of escape, states of minds, and drama that Blythe endures is just mindblowing to experience as a reader. The writing style of Morley was detailed, breathtaking and enrapturing for me. The only fact that kept me from giving this book five stars is that after Blythe manages to get out of the silo, the setup of the plot just seems to be random and not as well thought through and put together. It bored me in comparison to what I had just previously read, and had me skimming the pages multiple times before i completely grasped what was going on. Overall, though, a fantastic book that I would recommend to any apocalyptic/thriller genre fans! Great book!