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Restoring Harmony

The year is 2041, and it’s been ten years since the Collapse.  Most people have evacuated the cities, and there is no more oil, but 16-year-old Molly’s family is doing well.  They live on a small island in Vancouver, B.C., and have a self-sustaining farm to keep them fed.  However, when the island’s doctor is unexpectedly killed in an accident and Molly’s mother’s pregnancy has complications, she must make a journey to Portland, Oregon to retrieve her grandfather (who is a doctor) and grandmother and bring them back to Vancouver.  While this book is set in a harsh dystopian future, this is a relatively gentle story about family relationships and a teenage girl’s search for home.  The core of the story revolves around the relationship between Molly, her grandparents, and a mysterious boy named Spill who is inexplicably sweet, but may have a dark secret.  Molly is a fiddle player, and Anthony excellently portrays her connection to music, family, and the earth.   A few writing quirks (too many exclamation points!) keep this book in R and not R* territory, but it’s a good read-a-like for those who loved The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd or Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer.