Monarch Rising
-
-
3.0 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
In a chilling near-future New United States of America, Jo Monarch has grown up in the impoverished borderlands of New Georgia. She’s given one chance to change her fate... if she can survive a boy trained to break hearts.
Today is the day Jo Monarch has been wishing on the moon about her entire life. It's the day of the Lineup, when she could be selected to leave her life in the Ashes behind. The day she could move across the mountains to a glittering, rich future.
Once Jo is plucked from the Lineup, the real test begins. She still needs to impress the New Georgia Reps at tonight's Gala, and her path forward leads straight to Cove Wells. The damaged stepson of one of the Reps, Cove has been groomed as an emotional weapon, taught that love is a tool -- and he's set on breaking Jo's heart next.
When a riot breaks out back in the Ashes the night of the Gala, Jo's dreams might all go up in smoke. Can she really have everything she's ever wished for... when it means leaving all her loved ones behind in the fire?
Harper Glenn's debut is as gripping as it is prescient, an unflinching meditation on whether love can save us from ourselves, and what it takes to be born anew.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Glenn's splashy near-future dystopian debut, Black 17-year-old Josephine Monarch, an artist whose parents died in a revolution, longs to leave the Ashes, a town personified by "waterless borderlands full of brown grass, Radius-ridden rats, disorderly cops, and poor people." Jo's only hope for a future free from squalor is to be selected from the Lineup, a process in which Ashes teenagers must pass an academic exam, dress their best, and line up for wealthy Reps from nearby New Georgia. The Reps then choose the most promising participants from the Lineup to attend an ornate Gala, wherein the teens have the opportunity to be integrated into New Georgian high society for a "lifetime of luxury and comfort." Jo has spent years preparing for this moment; all that stands in her way is white 18-year-old heartbreaker Coventry "Cove" Wells and his determination to break her spirit. But even as she delves deeper into New Georgia's opulence, she fears that a brewing revolution back home will jeopardize her future. Despite uneven pacing and underbaked themes regarding intracommunal oppression and examinations of privilege, Glenn's impressive character-building presents a highly motivated, dynamically layered cast, driven by their respective trauma and desire for change. Ages 14–up.
Customer Reviews
A great read
I loved this book. It was so good. I loved Jo’s journey and how the author brings it back full circle.