Book Review: Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne

Monument 14
Monument 14 #1
Author: Emmy Laybourne
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Dystopian
Released: June 5th 2012
Review Source: Feiwel & Friends
Available: Amazon

Summary: (from goodreads) Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.

Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.

But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.

Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.

In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.

What would you do if you were tasked with the responsibility of keeping someone safe in a time of danger knowing that their very lives depends on your every action? Now think about doing all those things, as an emotional, charged teenager. That’s the challenge presented for a group of six teenagers in the debut novel Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne. In Monument 14 society is falling apart, natural disasters strikes all parts of the globe, and an evil lurks through the air. We start the drop into madness with a terrorizing bus ride that leaves six sole teenage survivors in charge of a group of children at a supermarket, where they have taken shelter. Faced with times like never before, the group strives to survive together in a world that holds no love for them.

For a debut novel this was quite good work from Emmy Laybourne. Her writing style shows that she truly understands the concept of writing a young adult novel. The way her characters interact are very in depth and show a realness that few authors can capture in a character. Now there are moments where the scenes are hectic and could use a sense of pace, but overall the author does a very good job of creating a complete and well-rounded novel. I have a feeling that this won't be the last great novel from her.