



Be Ready for the Lightning
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3.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From acclaimed New Face of Fiction alumna Grace O'Connell, a suspenseful, poignant and provocative tale about violence, sibling love, friendship, heroism--all told through the lens of a young woman trapped in a hijacked bus.
On the surface, Veda's life in Vancouver seems to be going just fine--at nearly thirty, she has a good job, lifelong friends, and a close bond with her brother, Conrad. But Conrad's violent behavior, a problem since he was a teen, is getting more and more serious, and Veda's ongoing commitment to watch out for him is pushing her to a breaking point.
When Veda is injured as a bystander during one of Conrad's many fights, she knows it's time to leave Vancouver for a fresh start. She heads to New York, staying in the Manhattan apartment of old friends Al and Marie. Exploring the city, she swings between feeling hopeful and lost--until one day the bus she's on is hijacked by a sweet-faced gun-toting man named Peter. He instructs Veda and the other passengers to spray paint the bus windows black, and what ensues is a gripping and unpredictable hostage situation, the outcome of which will make Veda question everything she knows about herself and the nature of fear.
Told with powerful immediacy and warmth, at once unsettling and engrossing, Be Ready for the Lightning is a story of violence, its attractions and repulsions; of love, loyalty and friendship; and of a young woman finding an unexpected kind of bravery.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Trauma deeply, irrevocably changes a person. Veda, the protagonist of Be Ready for the Lightning, is sent reeling after the bus she’s on is taken hostage at gunpoint—even her previous experiences with unpredictable violence back home in Vancouver haven’t prepared her for this. In her sophomore novel, Toronto writer Grace O’Connell meticulously sifts through the disaster's aftermath, examining the tangled emotions around survival and probing Veda’s newfound fame in her adopted home of New York City and her brother’s continued struggles across the continent.