"Away" by Megan E. Freeman

Any y'all remember Alone way back in 2023? I do. This is the sequel slash companion novel.

It follows four random kids caught up in the evacuation, including one of the members of Maddie's aborted secret sleepover from Alone. Unlike in the first book, they're not alone for the entire thing; they get stuck in a refugee camp.

Oh, we also get more context for the backstory behind the "imminent threat" in this book. |It's California's fault.| They're having a |chronic drought| because they decided to |cram far too many people into a literal desert|, and for some reason they thought the best course of action was to |pipe the entire Eldorado River out of Colorado into California. Instead of doing sane things like, y'know, building seawater treatment plants or not having so many people in a literal desert|.

|While the plan is completely and utterly ridiculous, at least it makes more sense than "oh the government wants to steal a bunch of land that it then doesn't do anything with."|

(The |Eldorado River| is a real thing, by the way. I looked it up. Unlike in the book, however, it's |not in Colorado at all; it's in Alaska|.)

I have no idea why the cover is a guy in a Spiderman hoodie standing on a car. It doesn't have tons of bearing on the story.

The characters range from 12 to 15ish, a nice change from the Eternal 12-Year-Old Syndrome in most middle-grade fiction. Another nice change is that it explained why none of the adults are taking action against the evacuation or |noticing the signs that it's not real|.

I was not immersed in this book as much as I was in Alone. This is my own fault; I purposely held myself out of the story somewhat because I wasn't in the mood to wander around remembering the book for days afterward. That said, this book is also probably not as intrinsically immersive as Alone is; the viewpoint jumps around a bit (did I mention there are four main characters?) and, because there are actual conversations thanks to having more than one character, there's some prose. Well, sort of; it takes the form of film scripts. Though it's still mostly in verse, the inclusion of dialogue made it less... impactful, somehow? Or maybe that's just my experience differing because, as mentioned, I intentionally prevented myself from getting fully immersed.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some mild violence.

3 stars. Would have gotten 4, but there's a woman pastor who features semi-prominently in one of the characters' lives, and I happen to believe that's unbiblical.

(Endnote: |And California would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.|)