Just One Friend

Just One Friend

by June Shaw, Brooke and Caroline Naquin

In This Place, you are allowed one friend and one friend only. Girls are forced to perform physical feats for the entertainment of the older women in order to determine if they will be good matches for sons. Fail at your demonstration and you will probably never be seen again.

Alabama Long is the best at what she does. She also has a dog who follows her everywhere, which helps when the women are watching her. Each evening, she goes home to her one friend: her grandmother.

When the Ruler calls Alabama in, it can't be good.

She's accused of having a second friend and she's forced to run with her grandmother to the land beyond the warning signs. A land that has far too many dangers, but none as dangerous as what she's leaving behind.

Can Alabama have everything she wants? Will she survive getting it?

Final thoughts:  What the heck!?!?! This is so poorly written! When I noticed that there were three authors, it actually made a little sense. It reads like a few people got on an online chat and took turns writing line after line. The whole thing is poorly paced, confusing, and lacks any kind of description. The Teller Boy has gray eyes. That's it. That's all we know. Seriously. Would it kill to have more than one adjective for people and things? Half the time, I had no idea what was going on because I'm one of those movie-maker readers and I couldn't make the movie because I had no descriptions to use to paint the images in my brain. The timeline was pretty horrid, too. They run for days, but it only takes hours to get back when they need to? Were they just running in tiny circles? What's going on with the desert and then the killing valley? WHY IS IT LIKE THIS?!?!!  Is this an alternate reality or a crazy dystopia? No fun. No sense. And definitely no recommendation.

Rating: 1/5