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.
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| 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?
