Book Review: Quake by Lisa Arrington

Finished January 28, 2014

Synopsis on Good Reads

Ali and Caden thought they were your average teenagers trying to navigate high school pressures and college decisions.

During a camping trip all of that changes when an earthquake ushers in an Alien invasion on their small desert hometown.

Lives are lost and friendships are tested as Ali and Caden, along with their best friends, begin running for their lives. However, nothing can prepare them for the secrets they discover when they begin learning more about themselves then they ever thought possible.


My Review on Good Reads
3 of 5 stars

I wish they had half stars or 10 stars Good Reads. Quake is definitely worth a 3.5 closing in on but not quite 4. The book was too short and the ending abrupt. I remember reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm in one night high school. That’s classic literature not young adult but it was a shorter book than Quake so the length of the book is not my issue for a young adult book. It’s just that it ended with me not craving more but looking for the next chapter.

Now onto the reason I gave it the almost 4 stars.

I absolutely loved every one of the characters! The teens in the book are very real and I could have easily been friends with them when I was in high school if my brother had been on the basketball team. My brother and I were close like main characters Ali and her brother Caden so they seem very real to me and their mom has definite similarities to our mom when we were in high school. I already kind of disliked the bad guy before she was revealed as the bad guy and she is perfectly despicable.

The story is riveting and moves appropriately fast for young adult fiction so it makes the book hard to put down. Once the details of the alien invasion become apparent how the pieces all fit together makes sense.

I’m anxious for the follow-up book, AfterShock, to come out and will definitely read it. I’m just personally not a great fan of cliffhangers but I suppose the suspense is supposed to “kill me.” That worked. I’m on the mailing list because when it’s ready that next book “must be collected.”