As the story went on, it did make me think about Patrick Ness’s novel The Knife of Never Letting Go a little. I think boys will especially love it because it really has a gross-out factor. This is one of those no-holds-barred works of fiction that teens will love. For one thing, she’s completely cut off from the rest of the world. But these flesh eating teens aren’t the only thing Alex has to contend with. With a grunt, the boy plunged his fist into the woman’s abdomen and rooted around before coming back up with a drippy fistful of something liverish and soft enough that Alex could hear the squelch as the meaty thing oozed between his fists. Splashes of blood smeared their mouths and dripped over their chins like runny clown’s makeup. When she and Ellie stumble into a camp site, this is what Alex sees: By page 25, Jack is dead and Alex and Ellie are running for their lives.īy page 72 both Alex and the reader know they aren’t in Kansas anymore. Ellie is eight and is clearly not happy to be tramping through the woods. She’s decided not to do any more of the experimental treatments for her brain tumor – so she’s left her Aunt Hannah and headed to Waucamaw Wilderness in Michigan to clear her head and scatter the ashes of her parents, who had been killed in a helicopter crash.Īlex is enjoying the solitude of the woods until Jack, his granddaughter, Ellie and their dog Mina happen by.

And she has “a brain tumor the size of a tennis ball” lodged in her head.Īlex is on the run, sort of. “…once you’ve made up your mind, there’s no talking to you,” she says.

This improvised family will have to use every ounce of courage they have just to find food, shelter, while fighting off the 'Changed' and those desperate to stay alive.Ī tense and involving adventure with shocks and sudden plot twists that will keep teen and adult readers gripped.We learn quite a lot about the feisty heroine, Alex, in the prologue of Ilsa J. An electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky zapping every electronic device and killing the vast majority of adults.įor those spared, it's a question of who can be trusted and who has changed.Įveryone still alive has turned - some for the better (those who acquired a superhuman sense) while others for the worse (those who acquired a taste for human flesh).ĭesperate to find out what happened and to avoid the zombies that are on the hunt, Alex meets up with Tom - an Army veteran who escaped one war only to find something worse at home - and Ellie, a young girl whose grandfather was killed by the electromagnetic pulse. and who can they trust?Alex has run away and is hiking through the wilderness with her dead parents' ashes, about to say goodbye to the life she no longer wants to live.īut then the world suddenly changes.

Ilsa j bick ashes series