Review: Struck by Jennifer Bosworth

Title: Struck
Author: Jennifer Bosworth
Series: Book One in the Struck Series
Published By: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (May 8, 2012)
Source: ARC Provided by the Publisher
Genre: YA Paranormal/Dystopian
My Rating: 4 Stars

Goodreads Description:
 Mia Price is a lightning addict. She's survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.

Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.

Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn't who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.

My Review:

It has taken me awhile to write this review, longer than most reviews take for me to write at any rate. Maybe because I needed to process all that I had read.

Maybe because out of all the dystopian novels I have ever read, this one seemed so real. Like something that could very well happen to our world.

A huge storm. Earthquakes. Destruction, fire, famine, despair. False prophets, martyrs.

Yep, other than the whole supernatural aspect of it, it hits pretty close to the whole apocalypse, the world is ending thing. Something we have read or watched people talk about for well, a long time now.

The second coming, the end of the world. Call it what you want to but it is something that is just plain scary to think about. All the suffering and carnage. All the horrible things that could very well happen one day, things that do happen in this book.

So maybe that is why this novel was so gripping. Or maybe it was just that the writing was so well done. Either way, this is a book that will stick with you. One that will really make you think and will give you chills and goosebumps as you read it.

Gripping. I think that is a fitting word for this book. If I hadn't been so busy when I started reading this one, I very easily could have been consumed by it. I wanted to finish it all in one sitting but, alas, that just didn't happen and maybe that was a good thing. It was nice to read little bits at a time and process what I had read and think about as I went about my day doing the things that I needed to get done.

I loved Mia's character. She was a pretty strong person that had a huge burden put on her. Be the salvation of the world, or be it's undoing.

I love kick butt heroines and she was definitely one of them.

This was not a predictable storyline at all and I really enjoyed that about the story. The ending left me feeling very satisfied yet it also left it open for a sequel (which I know we will get), which I really hope we will get. I would love to have more Mia, Jeremy, Parker, Katrina and Mr. Kale. I don't think their story is over by far but rather that is has just begun.