Pure by Julianna Baggott

Title: Pure (Pure #1)
Author: Julianna Baggott
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Release date: February 8, 2012.
Source: Netgalley
Rating : 4/5


Buy it at: Book Depository , Amazon
Read first chapter HERE.

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . .


Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.


Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . .


There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it's his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.


When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

"We know you are here, our brothers and sisters.

We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace.

For now, we watch from afar, benevolently"

Pure is a dystopian novel about the dark days post-apocalyptic and the struggling to survive of the people that are left behind.

When I start reading Pure it was a bit of a shock to me, trying to imagine such world, is not sugar coated, the earth after “the end” is raw, grotesque at times. The story is situated nine years after the “detonations”, so most people remember the before, remember how was the world before the cataclysm. And there are two groups of survivors: the ones that live inside the dome that are called Pures and the ones that live outside the dome called wretches. The people that survive outside the dome are scarred, burned or fused with objects.

Pressia is 15 years old at the beginning of the story, she lives outside the dome with her grandfather and in her world the “military” recruit  all the people at sixteen and you have two choices be a soldier or be a target. Is a crude world and all the people doing what they can to survive and surprisingly Pressia has a good heart. She tries to stay alive but she helps people whenever she can.

Inside the dome lives Partridge, he´s 18 years old, a privileged boy in a sort of boarding school where he goes to classes,  to parties, lives in a safe environment, he has the “perfect” life, unmarked,  scarless.

What are the odds of this two different people meet each other?

I like Pure because is the first dystopian novel that I read that is situated shortly after the cataclysm. The people still remember the before, that must be difficult...to remember.

This novel got me hooked, has action, mystery, conspiracy theory.

Booktrailer

Thanks to Latin Books Tour  for the tour of this book.