UNWIND, AN INTERESTING BOOK

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Last week my Third Thursday book club got together at a restaurant we meet at once a month to discuss the book for June we’d read called Unwind by Neal Shusterman. It was a young adult book and very interesting. At first I wasn’t sure I’d like it because it took place in the future, and if parents were unhappy with their teenager for some reason, they sent them to a Harvest Camp where they would be unwound. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant..

There were three main teenage characters; Connor, Rhys, and Liv, who were being sent away. All three of them escaped however before they got to the camp. Connor was angry with his parents. He’d gotten in trouble off and on at school so that’s why they decided he needed to go.

Rhys, a girl had been in an orphanage, but when they decided they needed to get rid of some of the kids because they were running out of space and money, they were going to send her to the Harvest Camp, too, and she ran off.

Liv had been considered a special person since he was born, and his parents and the local pastor had decided that he was a child of God and when he reached his later teenage years, he’d be sent to the Harvest Camp, too. However, he happened to get involved with a car accident and Connor was able to save him and take him away.

The three of them ended up at a restaurant or bar, I forget which, but the woman in charge hid them away and then took to them to someone else to keep them hidden This women took them to a large camp where a retired army Admiral took in all the teenagers who were sent to be unwound to keep them away from being unwound. It was a large camp and not the Harvest Camp which later I found out was a camp where the teenagers were harvested of different body parts for patients who needed them like hearts, kidneys, arms, parts of brains, etc. They sold the body parts to hospitals for those who needed them.

Some of the teenagers at the Admiral’s camp were bullies and there were several murders that occurred there. Connor and Rhys remained close, but Liv had given them away before they came to this camp, He had mixed feelings about giving up what he’d been told for years would have been God’s will. I don’t think he actually knew what was involved. When he eventually turned up in the Admiral’s camp that protected the unwound kids, too, they didn’t want to forgive him. I won’t go into details about the ending, because there were some scary parts before it ends on a better note, I was really surprised about who the murderer of ten young people was.

Neal Shusterman

I highly recommend this book as did everyone at the meeting who had read it. A few of them who didn’t read it wanted to read it after our discussion. I think I’ll pick it for my other book club, too, when it’s my turn in October.  

Do you think you might like to read this?

What is a book you’d highly recommend?