Struck
Jennifer Bosworth

Farrar Straus Giroux
May 8, 2012 / 9780374372837
Teen Fantasy
Amazon

Reviewed by Jan Fields

Mia Price has been struck by lightning -- not once but many times. Still, that's not the worst thing her family has experienced. Her family was right in the middle of the earthquake that leveled most of Los Angeles, and her mother was trapped in the debris for hours. Now Mia struggles to keep the family together with her mother suffering from crippling fears and her brother desperate to do something, anything that matters. Now two different groups believe Mia may be the key to the end of everything. One side wants to use her to usher in the apocalypse while the other side believes she needs to stand with them to prevent it.

Mia just wants to be left alone by both sides -- but that's not likely to happen. Mia is the classic reluctant hero and written with skill and depth by Jennifer Bosworth. As with any apocalyptic novel, there are characters that see the events in a deeply religious light, and the handling of the religious aspects was skillful. The cult is properly scary, but not all religious people are portrayed as nut jobs, a frequent weakness in books that include cults. I also particularly liked the character of the mysterious boy, Jeremy, as the story unfolds we discover he believes he knows the end of the story and he knows how he can stop it -- but quickly finds he can't do what he believes he needs to do. It reminded me of the question, "If you could go back in time, would you kill infant Hitler." On the one side you know the future -- but on the other, what kind of person can kill an innocent? So Jeremy must find another answer and the struggle nearly tears him apart. That's the kind of characterization where nothing is easy and everything has a cost, that makes Struck a step above many of the apocalyptic novels I've read. It's compelling, complex and unexpected -- definitely a keeper.